TMNT: Breathe Me
by princessebee
Summary: 2k7verse. Set within the continuity of the tmnt stories I started in 2007. Following the events of Rid of Me, Raphael & Angel are involved & trying to make it work - but spectres from the past continue to haunt them both.
1. Chapter 1

_This fic is set within the continuity of my 2k7verse and refers to events that occurred in 'Rid of Her'. It can be found on my profile, beneath this one near the top._

_This story contains adult material and is not suitable for under-18s. It contains references to or depictions of child sexual abuse, domestic violence, drug use, rape, violence and murder and should be read with caution by those who are sensitive to such material. None of the abuse Angel experiences is enacted by Raphael, rest assured on that._

**2007**

Angel knows Raphael would never hit her.

She knows even more than that.

Raphael would rather die than hit her. Raphael would rather cut off his own hand and beat himself to death with it rather than hit her. If Raphael so much as pushed her out of the way while he was worked up, he would spend the rest of his life punishing himself for it by breaking the same damn hand over and over again on any thug he could find.

No, she knows Raphael would never hit her.

It's just that sometimes he gets so goddamn angry.

He's like a storm when he gets angry. The building pressure like dark clouds gathering in the horizon, the rising tension, electricity in the air all around him. The first outburst like the clap of thunder… and then the deluge – the raging and the pacing, all the clatter and chaos – he yells and tosses things, slams fists against the doorframe, strides around the room, filling it with his bulk and fury.

And she can't help it. When she sees the warning signs – the dark scowl, the hunching posture, the huffing and snappish replies – her heart begins to skitter, and her hands grow clammy and her throat tightens. She tiptoes around him, staying silent, staying inconspicuous and quiet, letting him pick the movie, getting him a drink, not asking him what's up, not touching him, not even daring to breathe too loud. Sometimes he simmers down on his own. Sometimes he hits the street before he explodes to work it out on whatever hapless thug he happens across.

But sometimes it doesn't matter what she does, or doesn't do – he just flips out.

He's never angry at _her_. But that doesn't matter either. What does matter is that he's angry, and there's two hundred pounds of densely packed muscle and shell of him and when he's angry he consumes the room and there seems nowhere for her to go. And she can't help it, she's terrified. She shakes and her heart thuds fit to burst and her dinner threatens to come back up, her gut twisting in agonising knots and there's a pressure behind her eyes as though she's going to cry and all she wants to do is hide, make herself as small as possible and squeeze into the tiniest corner, hear nothing, see nothing, feel nothing, until it's all over.

And it's not because she thinks Raphael would ever hit her. She knows he wouldn't.

It's because Julio did.


	2. Chapter 2

**2007**

"I dunno, I think I should go on a diet," she says, frowning at her reflection.

"No," Raphael replies sharply, but has the grace to look somewhat abashed when she raises an eyebrow at him where he watches her from the bed of her cramped, crummy apartment. "I mean, I'm not tellin' ya what you should do. But I like you like this."

"Yeah?" She hates how hopeful she sounds, but she's pleased anyway because the image in the narrow mirror she's got propped up against the faded striped wallpaper is making her throat tighten with self-loathing. She'd been effortlessly slim until she hit eighteen, then all of a sudden she was pouring out of everything. She blames her mother.

"Yeah," he says and she sees in the mirror that behind her he's sitting forward, admiring the curve of her ass and the shape of her thighs with a hungry look in his eye, his gaze brazenly tracing her figure where it fills out the tight black and gold check romper she had to have, even though she can't really afford extravagances like that anymore.

She flicks her gaze back to her own reflection and thinks maybe she doesn't look so fat after all.

Angel turns around to face Raphael with a little grin, knowing she fills out the top of the romper just as well as the bottom, and sure enough Raphael's gaze fixes at a spot unmistakeably lower than her eyes and she almost wants to laugh at the entranced lust that glazes the green of his.

He catches her watching him and smirks, then beckons her to him with a twitch of a massive finger. "C'mere."

She goes, letting her hips sway a little more than usual, knowing her breasts are bouncing as she walks, watching him as he watches her cross over the knotty old carpet in the apartment that is a confusing hodge-podge of expensive indulgences and cheap old crap. When she gets close, he reaches out and grasps her by the hips, tugging her forward to straddle his lap, and a sudden rush of arousal prompts a little 'mmm' from her lips as her crotch grinds against his plastron. He rubs his face against her cleavage while his hands squeeze her ass, kneading it with relish, and for a moment her gut lurches as she remembers Julio slapping her backside, cruelling grasping the flesh and jiggling it. _"You gotta lose some weight, mama. You're too fuckin' fat. It ain't sexy."_

"You're hotter 'n hell," Raphael growls against her breasts and then he's peeling the straps of the romper off her shoulders, his teeth grazing freshly bared flesh so that she shivers, his tongue teasing her nipples to attention and she stops thinking about Julio until Raphael grasps a handful of her belly.

He squeezes it with the same pleasure and affection he shows the rest of her body, but it still makes her uneasy, suddenly uncomfortably aware of how soft and squishy she is, and how lean and muscular Raphael is, like Julio was, who would grasp hold of her belly while they fucked and grimace in disgust. She's disgusting, she's flabby and gross and Raphael must be lying to make her feel better and then she's pushing his hand away, moving it back around to her ass.

Then he stands up, lifting her effortlessly with him and her heart lurches even as she squeals and wishes she could enjoy it more.

"I'm too heavy," she protests, and he scoffs, turning around and laying her carefully, easily on the rumpled bed before grasping hold of the romper to peel it off the rest of her. His cock is out, hard and glistening and she can feel the moistness between her own thighs as he balances himself over her, kissing and nipping at her breasts.

"You're so fuckin' hot," he murmurs again, his hands running all over her body and it feels, it really feels, as though he likes it.

"You really think so?" She doesn't want to sound so needy, but she wants to hear it again, and again.

"Fuck yeah." His breathing is heavy and his hand is between her legs and her body is beginning to sing with pleasure as he softly strokes and rubs her in just the right way, his mouth hot on her breasts. "What, I ain't signallin' loud and clear down here?" He nods to his crotch and she giggles, then relaxes against the mattress and lets herself succumb to the moment.

Afterwards, he cups her face in his hands, his calloused thumbs rough as he strokes her cheeks and looks straight into her eyes. "You're so beautiful," he says firmly. "Don't change a thing."

And she believes him.


	3. Chapter 3

**2003**

The first time she tricked, she expected to feel different afterwards.

She was sixteen and she didn't want to deal drugs. She knew the turtles – knew Raphael – wouldn't approve. She could steal, but there was a lot of effort and organisation involved – plus then you had to actually offload the merch. Too hard. Plus she thought that might be going a step too far as well for her friends – they'd stolen themselves, as necessary. Shit, they illegally tapped the city's water and electricity. But they were sparing and discreet in their efforts, reserving it for necessities only. A dedicated, concentrated effort was probably a line for them.

She couldn't get a legit job, because she had to stay off the grid. She'd known it was only a matter of time until her last foster father raped her, so she'd bolted. If they tracked her down, it would be just another shitty family that resented her being there – and possibly another pervert with ill intentions.

She needed a job that paid cash.

She needed a job where no one knew who she was.

She needed a job that paid decent money so she could afford to keep herself.

It was the obvious decision.

The very real prospect of not eating what was finally compelled her to action, ambling down West 42nd Street in her jeans and boots, the backpack with all her shit on her back, nowhere to go and no fucking idea what to do.

She could've gone to the turtles, or April. She knew they would've taken her in and let her stay, kept her fed and warm and comfortable. But pride stopped her asking for help, as it always would from that moment forth. She didn't want to explain she'd been getting touched up by a creepy old white dude. She didn't even want to think about it. And if she put words to that, then she might not be able to stop that Purple Dragon story pouring out next and she never, ever, ever wanted to tell anyone about that. Especially not the turtles. Especially not Raphael. They'd never look at her the same again.

After all, she'd been so proud.

She couldn't exactly say why she feared talking about one would lead to the revelation of the other. It was just a feeling she got and a risk she didn't want to take.

It turned out tricking was easy. The men knew what to look for in that neighbourhood, even if she didn't, and young girls loitering alone were a pretty safe bet.

After the first trick, she went in search of a motel that wouldn't ask too many questions, and as she walked, waited to feel different.

But she didn't.

She didn't feel different at all. She was still exactly the same person she had always been, in full possession of her body and her mind. Nothing had changed.

Except…

She'd jammed a hand in her pocket and fondled the four crumpled bills wedged there.

Except now she was two hundred dollars richer.


	4. Chapter 4

**2008**

If they go to the most ramshackle old cinemas, to the late-night sessions, when the attendants are red-eyed and disinterested, when their fellow audience will be only the loneliest of the nightlarks and the bone-weary despairing afflicted by insomnia, if Raphael wears his sweat suit and scarf and beanie and she buys the tickets and the popcorn, they can have movie dates like a regular couple.

"It ain't up for debate, Angel," Raphael says as they walk into the cinema, the threadbare red carpet tacky with years of spilled candy and soda beneath their feet. "I'm payin'."

"You paid last time!" she retorts pertly. "And I'm the one who has to go up there. How you gonna stop me?" It's the same argument they have every time. She knows it burns him right up he can't just take charge, go up and order the tickets himself, that she has to do it and he has to convince her to take his money. But with as little as they both make, she figures it's only fair they take it in turns. Plus it's kinda cute to watch him get all insistent and blustery. None of the others ever wanted to take her out so bad. Except Julio, and that was only when he was reeling her in.

Above the scarf that muffles the lower half of his face, Raphael's eyes bulge as they face off in the sparsely lit lobby, abandoned but for them and the sleep-walking attendant behind the counter who stares at the ceiling with his jaw dangling.

"Take the damn money, Angel," he growls, trying to thrust the bills into her hand while she grins cheekily at him and yanks her arm away. "Damned if I can't take my girl out once in a while."

She looks into his eyes, blazing with determination and ferocity, and melts. Just like she does every time.

"Okay," she sighs, reluctantly accepting the cash. "But I'm payin' for the popcorn."

His shoulders have relaxed a smidgen since she's relinquished, and the way his eyes glitter she can almost see the smirk that's twisting his mouth below the scarf.

"You gotta be so feminist about things, you can damn well pay for dinner too," he quips and even as she pouts indignantly and scoffs, she can't help the grin running up her face. He'd never let her do that, either.

When she tries to give him his change, he just closes his great fist over hers tightly, and directs her hand back to her purse. Her heart skitters a little as his grip reminds her of one less kind, but then he's leading her into the theatre and she remembers only that she's on a date with her man and can cuddle up with him in the dark while they watch a scary movie.

It's _The Eye_, but it's boring as fuck. Raphael is getting irritated, frustrated by the cumbersome clothes he hates and the waste of an excursion, fidgeting in the battered and lumpy old seat and huffing. Angel glances at him; in the dark cinema he's pulled the scarf away from his face and she feels a jolt of warmth at the sight of his blunt snout and crabby expression, tenderness for her hot-tempered, passionate and terribly sweet mutant turtle of a boyfriend welling inside her like she'll flood with it.

Raphael starts when her hand slides inside his sweat pants but before he can say more than "huh?", she's nibbling and nuzzling at his neck in the way that always turns him to putty in her hands and she feels his tail twitch beneath her fingertips.

"What you doin'?" he manages to whisper hoarsely, shifting edgily around as she continues to gently maul his neck, and casting an anxious glance about the cinema. But there's only two other people in the audience, and they're right down in front. "You wanna get us bu – "

She silences him with a kiss, and despite his misgivings his mouth responds against hers. "You sayin' you _don't_ want me to suck your cock?" she murmurs teasingly into his ear and grins when she hears him inhale sharply, and an instant later his erect organ is sliding out of its sheath and directly into her waiting hand. Raphael doesn't exactly verbalise when they're fucking, but he sure as hell likes it when she has a thing or two to say.

They kiss again and this time it's his mouth over hers and there's the barest nip of his teeth at her lip; there's a tremble at the base of her groin and as she bends into his lap she can feel the slick rub between her thighs, how quickly she's grown wet. He shifts again, this time to angle his hips upwards and give her easier access as she tugs down the waistband of his sweatpants and runs her tongue brazenly over the flared and flattish head of his cock.

He fists his huge hand in her hair as she sucks him off and, even above the thundering soundtrack of the film, she can hear the heavy, ragged pace of his breathing. She feels powerful and exhilarated as her head bobs up and down, her lips eagerly working his rigid shaft and there's a throb in her loins when his other hand wrests into the neck of her dress and roughly fondles her breasts, her nipples hardening quickly.

When he's done, he pushes her back into her seat and kisses her fiercely as his hand moves up under her dress, yanking her panties aside, a thick finger sinking straight into her so that she gasps sharply into his mouth. She shamelessly thrusts as his thumb slides quickly against the slick nub at the heart of her and when he lowers his head to her breast and tugs one nipple between his teeth, she comes, shuddering as she clenches hard around his finger and he swears quietly to feel it, his breath hot against her skin. She grips his scalp and bites down hard on her lip so as not to let loose the ragged cries that will give them away and Raphael kisses her again, softly now, as the bliss ebbs, leaving her quivering and molten-kneed.

They watch the rest of the film in smug, smirking silence.

Later, as hand-in-hand they quickly leave the brightly-lit main streets for the darker back ones, the streets in this neighbourhood strewn with trash and endlessly cracked, Raphael glances at her, eyes bright with lusty admiration and she can tell, beneath the scarf, he's grinning.

"Wow," is all he says, but she's never felt so fucking hot. She can feel her hips sway as she struts a little, her heeled ankle boots clicking pertly on the sidewalk.

"Wanna go back to my place and fool around some more?" she asks him cheekily, cosying up against his arm.

He chuffs, lifts his arm up and around her shoulders and even though she is a little taller, she feels so dainty. "You gotta ask?"

She giggles, blood flushing her cheeks as she grins at him, so she doesn't see the woman who comes round the corner in front of them, darting into the street towards the other side of the road.

But Raphael does, and his head whips to follow her, his body tensing so rigid he unthinkingly crushes her against his side.

"What is it?" she queries, alarmed, as he abruptly turns his head back to the street ahead, ploughing onwards with sudden aggression, a glower now contorting his brow. "Raph?"

"Nothin'," he growls. "Was nothin'."

But she's already looked back. Already seen. The woman hailing a cab on the other side of the street is too tall, too old, her red hair too artificially bright, and there's a pair of thick spectacles perched on her nose. But at a passing glance her slim figure and loose long hair could deceive, and a sour disappointment clogs Angel's throat, betrayal clamping down hard around her heart and squeezing it into a bitter, dark nugget. Raphael says nothing and she doesn't know if that's because he's too far caught up in his own furious emotions to notice she looked back, or wants to pretend he hasn't noticed, hasn't noticed how stiff she's gotten, how sullen.

After a few more steps, he drops his arm and though he takes her by the hand once more, it's a hollow sort of solace. He's not really there, the hardness of his eyes and the tenseness of his jaw betraying his thoughts as vividly as if he had been detailing them to her. They walk the rest of the way in silence and it's as though all they shared earlier was just a dream. Right then, they're strangers.

She's no longer in the mood for sex when they get back to her place, but she wants him to hit her up just the same, just so that she can feel some stark semblance of reassurance, some thin shadow of the desirability and passion she experienced earlier, in another time and another place.

He doesn't.

He barely bothers to mutter an excuse before vanishing out her window, off to chase away his demons in some senseless and unsavoury way in the streets beyond, leaving her with a hollow ache she tries in vain to quell by shrieking and throwing shit savagely around her apartment. It exhausts her but does nothing to stem the pain and all she can think as she collapses onto her bed and feels the first of her tears spill is that she's so damn messy anyway he's not even gonna notice.


	5. Chapter 5

**2008**

Michelangelo had told her. He'd filled her in a few years ago when he explained why he couldn't hang out as much at a certain time of year. "Try as I might, I can't stop myself objectifying women in spring," he told her over the phone in his usual playful style, making her laugh cos when is Mikey not objectifying women and he knows it. "I ogle, I drool, I pant. It really pisses April off. There's only one thing on my mind and you'll know it."

"Instead of all the times there's only one thing on your mind and you keep it so well hidden?" she points out and Mikey laughs.

"Touché."

Raphael grows uncomfortable as the weather starts to turn warmer, seeming ever on the cusp of telling her something before changing his mind, but his preoccupation with her breasts grows and finally one day while they're fixing dinner and he keeps spilling shit cos he can't stop staring she just throws it out there, nonchalant and easy:

"I know about mating season, papi. It's cool."

He's startled and she can tell he's on the verge of getting pissy and defensive but she just keeps on chopping the peppers and after a moment he relaxes and goes back to breading the chicken.

She knew about mating season, but she wasn't prepared for it. She'd thought Raphael was a typical horny guy before, but now he can't seem to keep his hands off her at all. He'll hit her up anywhere; against the fridge, on the counter top, against the door, on the couch, on the floor and in the bathtub. Her neck and shoulders, breasts and thighs are a mess of hickeys. She doesn't mind. It's fun, and she feels wanted, desired, sexy and irresistible, even if she walks a bit funny. But that's fun too. Raphael always takes care of her so she's never left unsatisfied and that's a welcome change from the past where her boyfriends always seemed to think she'd spontaneously orgasm the second they thrust their dicks inside her. It hurts to think about, how she'd get all hot and bothered because they were handsome and ripped and she cared about them, only to find herself staring at the ceiling afterwards, thinking _is that fucking it? _If she can thank Amber for anything, it's for teaching Raphael about the clitoris – and that it's not a fucking tuning dial.

But she's been working whatever extra hours she can since she stopped tricking, and one night when she gets home at the start of April, she's worn down to the bone, her shoulders drooping beneath the exhaustion and her eyelids heavy, each step like trying to lift her legs in quicksand.

Raphael kisses her with clear intent, his hands already moving to squeeze her ass and she shuts her eyes in resignation. She's not in the mood for sex, but she knows how men get when you say no. They chuck tantrums, get all pissy and stroppy, flounce around and bitch and whine until you just give in to shut them up. She doesn't want Raphael to be upset with her, so she doesn't say anything, just puts her arms around him.

She knows what will happen now. It's always been the same, whether Marcus or Jerome or Emmanuelle or Julio, like they all went to the same fucking class on it, and maybe men do. He'll pretend not to notice that she isn't responsive, that she's turned her face away, that her body is tense and dry. He'll lay her down and fuck her while she shuts her eyes and waits and after it's over, he'll kiss her and say _that was beautiful baby, you're a goddess_. And when he's asleep, she'll go for a walk because there's absolutely fucking nothing else she can do with her anger.

She's thinking all this as Raphael is undressing her, mutely complying even as the scream begins at the base of her heart, hoping it'll just be done with quick and maybe next time she won't be so tired.

But then Raphael stops and is looking at her strangely and she realises she's been staring at the far wall, her eyes tracing the ragged edges of the Left Eye poster she's kept since she was fourteen, over and over, just waiting for it to be finished.

Raphael is staring at her, his brow furrowed and his lips slightly parted, a look of wary unease in his eye.

She figures she should say something, except she has no idea what to say, but a moment later it doesn't matter because he turns away and vanishes out the window.

And as exhausted as she is, she can't sleep after that.

She's too tired even to cry, but she mixes herself a strong vodka-orange, sits on her two-thousand dollar couch in her shitty, messy, one-room apartment and debates calling him, suddenly terrified he'll never come back, that it's over, that she's fucked up the one relationship that actually seemed to be working.

But a little while later he bursts silently through the window and onto the carpet in the smooth fluidity of movement that always dazzles her, reminds her that her man is a fucking trained ninja, and her heart chokes her throat as he stands before her, clearly agitated.

"Do I – " he begins and pauses, running a hand back over the dome of his skull, his shoulders rising up and falling as he exhales heavily. "Do I make you feel like you can't say no?" His voice is pitched a little higher than usual and, though he's confrontational, he isn't aggressive. He just sounds upset.

She just stares up at him, too startled to collect her thoughts and a second later he bursts out, "Cos you can! Shit, Angel, I can always just jerk off, ya know."

He's blunt and crude, but there's something beseeching in his tone. He isn't trying to make her feel guilty. Isn't accusing her of anything. He means it.

"I'm just so damn tired today, Raph," she finally speaks. "I want you, I do, just tonight I'm – "

"Shh," he interrupts her, coming to sit beside her on the couch, arm around her shoulders and his other huge hand covering hers and it's only then she realises tears are slipping down her cheeks. "There don't need to be a reason."

She looks into his green eyes and sees the sincerity and concern there, the sensitivity in that gaze that she first saw all those years ago when Ryan went missing and she realised Raphael was far more than just a meathead ever itching for a fight, and she remembers why she first started to fall for him.

Raphael takes a deep breath, his eyes darken and she knows something else is bothering him and he's dreading putting it into words. But he does, because he never runs from anything that scares him.

"Has there been other times – you haven't – wanted to?" His voice is low, his gaze tense and ready for the blow.

"Never," she promises him and the relief that lightens his face is short-lived as she continues unthinkingly, "Not with you, anyway."

"With others?" He gets to his feet, face contorted with rage as he paces the small room furiously, the loathing and fury he'd reserved for himself now finding its outlet externally. "Who are they?"

Her hands are up, trying to placate him, her heart automatically skittering and a tremble overtaking her even though she knows his anger here wants to avenge her. "They're gone, papi, forget about them." She doesn't want to detail for him the humiliating chronicle of her past. She especially doesn't want to tell him about Julio.

"I'll fuckin' kill them," he growls and, despite it all, his anger makes her feel good, makes her feel safe and loved, even though she knows he doesn't love her.

"Can't you just cuddle me instead?"

And his head snaps to look at her and his gaze softens as he takes in her tear-streaked face where she sits, still half-dressed, on the couch. He clenches and unclenches his fists and he shakes his shoulders slightly, as though he's actually trying to cast off the rage. Then he's beside her and pulling her into his arms, kissing the top of her head and even though it doesn't change anything that's ever happened to her, it feels good that someone knows at least a little bit about it, that it's Raphael and that he cares. Even if he doesn't love her, he cares.


	6. Chapter 6

**2004**

She was thirteen when she had her first sexual experience.

Initiation into the Purple Dragons was a series of challenges. Before they even let her go on a job with them – when Casey had busted her and she'd swaggered and postured so tough – she had to show she had what it took. Apparently, this could only be proven by giving a bunch of them blowjobs. She had no idea how old they were, except they were all a lot older than her and she was terrified.

Afterwards, though, she was proud. She understood then why there weren't many girls in the Purple Dragons – none of them were as tough as she was. None of them could step up and take on anything that got thrown at them. None of them had what it took. She did. She wasn't afraid of anything. She was up for any challenge. She knew what loyalty meant and didn't hesitate to prove it. And she was rewarded for it with inclusion, trust and acceptance.

It wasn't until years later that she fully comprehended what had happened to her that night in the cramped and stifling room at the back of the warehouse, amidst boxes of stolen gear and cigarette-thickened air. It came upon her all in a rush one day during her apprenticeship, in the middle of cutting a customer's hair. She'd glanced at the mirror and caught a glimpse of her own reflection and it had hit her.

She'd swayed on her heels and the scissors had clattered to the checkerboard tiles. Her boss caught her as her knees gave way and the only rational thought she was capable of was a fervent prayer she wouldn't puke.

Later, when she'd recovered enough to go home, her heels clicking on the sidewalk and hugging herself tight as the constant cacophony of car horns and roaring engines pressed in around her, it occurred to her that now, if she were rich and white, this would be the time she would go and see a therapist.

But she was neither of those things.

Instead she decided to go visit Raphael.

But Raphael was out, Michelangelo had told her. Raphael was out most of the time these days, what with Leo being gone and all. And there was such a forlorn glitter to his eyes that she had stayed with him.

That's when she had learned about Amber.


	7. Chapter 7

**2008**

She's making a half-assed effort of tidying up her jumbled mess of a place when he bursts in her window, bringing with him the scent of hot summer rain and sweat.

"Hey, hot stuff," he says, sharkish grin on his face, eyes too bright even in the dim light of the lamps she prefers. "C'mere."

He grabs hold of her and has her up against the wall in a flash, mauling her gently, fervently with his teeth and lips, his hands grasping the generous curves of her body with hungry relish.

Even when there isn't a mark on him, she can tell when he's been in a fight.

"You seem pretty fuckin' pleased with yourself," she can't help but smirk a little as his knees nudge hers apart, his hands skimming up her thighs as he pushes her up against that crummy old striped wallpaper so that it rustles against her back, adrenaline making his touch twitch and jump across her skin as he roughly palm her breasts, grasps at her fleshy hips.

"Let's just say there's a few Purple Dragons out there who won't be causin' any trouble for a while," he mutters hotly into her neck, his teeth grazing her tender skin and making her shiver even as the gang name causes her gut to twist sourly.

It's these uncompromised victories – where he is uninjured, untouched, and she can only imagine what the other guys look like – that seem to most bring him alive.

"Gave 'em what for?" She doesn't really want to encourage him, but it's so rare to see him smiling this much, so easily. He stands back a moment, hands on her ass, green fire in his eyes.

"Didn't even see me comin'," he brags. "I was on fuckin' _fire_ tonight, baby. Not one of 'em touched me, not even once." He chuckles, squeezes her butt, unabashedly cocky the way he only ever gets when it comes to his physical prowess. "It was almost too easy."

If it was too easy, she doesn't want to think about what he might've done to vent the fury those bangers would've fuelled, denied if they failed to provide a real challenge. She forces a laugh; his attention feels good and she wants more of it. "That's my man," she manages to murmur encouragingly into his ear, and he growls happily and tips her back straight onto the floor, his powerful arms easily lowering her so the world whirls past but gently stops. She hates it on the floor, with the scratchy cheap carpet rough against her back and knees, worn so thin she can feel the unforgiving concrete beneath and grimy from the trek of endless years across it, but she loves him and it's exciting when he wants her this bad.

It's hard to resist him when he's like this, hard not to be swept away on the pulse of his excitement, the animalistic passion that seems to reach in and strum a similar chord in her, makes her groin throb, makes her get wet in seconds, makes her shudder as a thousand dormant nerves are stirred and come vividly to life. It's intoxicating, even as this propensity for violence, this need to follow trouble, reminds her he'll never be able to settle down and that's something she's finding herself, at the tender age of twenty-one, yearning for more and more.

As he helps wrest off her tank top and cut offs, his teeth nipping every newly bared swell of flesh and sending sparks skittering across her skin despite herself, she recalls once wanting as bad as he ever has to feel the strike of her fist against some nameless, faceless punk, against an army of them, to experience the heady rush of relief in brutality. But Julio beat those impulses out of her a hundred times over and now all she wants is a life untouched by violence, even violence so remote as Raphael kicking the shit out of some thugs who would've deserved it, far away from here, unwitnessed, the only evidence his hyped-up mood.

But even if she doesn't like the reason, she likes seeing him coasting on such a high, cocky and brash and uninhibited. It's so easy to let herself be carried by his fervour, his unrestrained lust firing her with a passion she's forgotten she's even capable of so that she feels a bolt of pure lust strike out across her loins like lightning, so she opens up like the heavens, every touch of their bodies like a thunderclap that echoes right across her heart. When he flips her onto her knees and grasps her by the hips, thrusts hard and fast into her, his breath a hoarse beat behind her shoulder, she feels unleashed, composed purely of sensation and ferocious animal lust, tethered only by the firmness of his grip on her.

But then his hand fists in her hair for a moment, just a moment, before he untangles it and gently smooths it through even as she stiffens for just a moment in kind, and she knows he's holding back, even as his thrusts continue unabated. He's never gotten careless again since that first night, but in all his care she cannot find comfort, because she knows it conceals a vast restraint.

There are always these moments when he's like this. When he pins her wrists to the bed, then abruptly lets go. His hand will find her neck to hold her still before quickly coasting down her spine in a caress. He'll grasp her ass and she can feel the impulse to smack her tremble in his palm before he squeezes instead.

And she knows he used to do those things to Amber. That Amber liked it and that he liked doing it to her. That he would go to her these nights his bloodlust was at once most sated and stirred and she would welcome him without question or judgement. That she liked him like this, a whole lot.

And she wishes she could like it too, wishes she could give that to him.

But she can't, and he knows it. Even if he doesn't know why, he senses the terror that grips her when she can't move, when there might be pain, when the threat of no control at all is looming, and the nudging tide of that aggression recedes before it can break. And it leaves her hollow and aching because Amber was able to take it. Because she wanted it. Because she trusted him and everything he is with everything she was and that's something Angel doesn't know how to do.

Raphael wraps a muscled arm around her abdomen, pulls her up so his mouth can find hers and she is grateful for the kiss, even as the carpet rubs painfully against her knees, even as the possibility of orgasm is chased away by the bitter tumble of her thoughts, overwhelming even the pleasure that the relentless beat of his cock inside her elicits. He speeds up, his mouth hot and wet against hers, his hand grasping one of her breasts and at least it feels good to be wanted this bad, and that makes it easier to pretend she's okay with this need he has, this drive to tempt fate. She knows he'd miss the secret wars he fights across the scarred city nights if he ever let them go, knows Amber was in a war of her own and wouldn't have been bothered by it at all.

She can feel the powerful tremble of his arm where it pins her against him; wonders if he wants to push her down against the floor to finish and all she wants right then is to be mindless, to lose herself wholly to the way he makes her body feel, to trust him the way Amber did and to forget Amber altogether. He pulls her hair away from her neck and bites her gently as he comes and she can feel, in that moment of stillness, the throb of him deep inside her.

He gets her onto the bed, where she lies back in a pile of discarded clothes, and gives her head but it's hard for her to relax when her mind will not end its ceaseless taunt and she makes him fuck her again, chasing his lust as bad as he chases trouble and he loves it enough that she can finally succumb, shuddering beneath him as climax at last claims her while he smirks above, smug and revelling in how it must seem to him that she condones his deadly pursuits, even if she cannot let him wholly unleash himself.

He never says anything, but it must bother him. On the face of it, they're pretty hot. He likes to be in charge, but she likes him to be and she never feels frightened in bed with him, and nothing ever hurts, and he never tries to talk her into anything and she's so fucking grateful that it doesn't seem that ridiculous the best sex of her life is with a mutant turtle.

But he's holding back and she thinks it's going to stack the odds against her in the end. Because she knows that when he instinctively moves to get rough, before catching himself and caressing her once more, it's because his heart is elsewhere. It's because when he reaches out, it's _her_ body he is yearning to find, and that she could give him things Angel can't, that they understood each other in a way she cannot fathom.


	8. Chapter 8

**2008**

Sometimes she can tell when Raphael is thinking of Amber.

He gets quieter. Raphael is never exactly chatty, but even still he talks enough for her to notice when he's withdrawn. He's moody by nature, but there's a stillness to him when he's thinking of her that is not natural to him. He stares into the distance and there's a look in his eye, a pensive and almost dreamy glaze as though he's gazing through time to when they were together, like the curtain between the past and the present has lifted and he's looking upon her, reliving a moment when they were laughing or talking or fighting or fucking. Once or twice she has caught a grimace of such pain and grief constrict his features that her heart aches for him more than it ever has for herself. She knows that's probably fucked up, when he's pining for his junkie ex, but she loves him to distraction and seeing him hurt is something she cannot bear.

If she interrupts him when he's like this he snaps at her viciously, then splits, and she knows him well enough to know he's feeling guilt as much as anything else. Cold comfort, and little enough of it.

She wonders what he remembers most about her and if it hurts because he misses it or because he regrets it. Does he remember the scent of her hair and the way it must've brushed against his skin when they sat side by side? Does he remember that brilliant smile when he pulled up to the curb on his bike and she was happy to see him? Does he remember thrusting inside her when they made love, the way her body yielded to his, the way their tongues entwined? Or does he remember only the cruel words and the conflict, the sharp points of syringes and the ugly lumps of smack, her paper-thin skin and the shadows beneath her eyes?

She reminds herself it doesn't matter because he will never, ever tell her. It's better not to think about it.

She's taken to walking away when he drifts into the haze of memory, going for a walk or cleaning the kitchen, putting a movie on or calling Mikey. Sometimes she goes into the bathroom and cries in the shower, the hot spray of water muffling her tears, the pink curtain locking out the world. She knows better than to confront him about it. It's a deal breaker; he made that clear the night they hooked up.

Once, when they were watching _Leaving Las Vegas_, she felt the precise moment he tuned out as they sat side by side on her stupidly expensive couch. One moment he was beside her and the next he was gone. His body still occupied the space, his hard thigh pressed against hers, his powerful, warm arm around her shoulders, the cushions depressing beneath his weight and the distinct, pleasant scent of him strong, but he wasn't there. He was off chasing the flick of red hair and those ice-cold eyes through the bleak and clouded terrain of recollection and when she stood up and walked over to the bed, he didn't even notice. She kicked the discarded mess of clothes to the floor, read a magazine and tried not to circle the things she wanted, like she used to when she was trickin', earphones in and Destiny's Child on repeat, I'm a survivor, I'm a survivor, I'm a survivor, I'm a survivor.

And then he was on the bed before she had even realised he'd moved, gently pulling her earphones off her head, his green gaze boring into her with an intensity that took her breath away and in the seconds it took him to undress her she was soaking wet and ready for him and for the first time in her life she really did climax almost as soon as he was inside her, shuddering in the aftermath and clinging to his shoulders as he moved quickly to his own release.

For a long while afterwards they lay entangled together in the thousand-thread-count sheets worn thin from a thousand washings as the end credits of the movie rolled in the background, and she pressed her eyes shut and pushed her face against his plastron, wanting the world to be nothing but his scent and the hard, secure bulk of him wrapped around her.

"I'm so fuckin' lucky to have you," she hears him murmur into her hair, his voice raspy and pensive.

It strikes her then that he really is. It's funny; she's known the turtles so long, they are so much a part of her life and she's so accustomed to them that she forgets the truth of it so easily, the simplest truth of all – they're turtles, mutant turtles, for whom the world has no place. Any semblance to a normal existence has always been denied them and the breathtaking breadth of opportunities they will likely never get outstrip her own disadvantages by far. That for one of them to have an actual girlfriend is so far beyond the realm of possibility he must still wonder sometimes if it's really happening – again. And that makes her reflect on herself and her part in it all. She's a human girl who regularly lets a mutant turtle stick his dick inside her. Who badly wants him to, so much she juices up just thinking about it. Who wants nothing more than to spend the rest of her life with him, even if a part of him is always somewhere far beyond her reach. Is it just that she was still young enough when they met to readily accept them so completely; or have human men so ruined her a mutant turtle is her last and best option? Or maybe she's just some kinda saint, able to see past the trappings to the heart within – y'know, where shit _really_ matters.

But if she's a saint, then so is Amber.

"I'm lucky to have you too," she mumbles back to him, the bony plating of his plastron textured against her lips as they move.

He chuffs, a somewhat bitter sound she thinks.

"Nah. Apart from anythin' else, I know I'm a lousy boyfriend," he mutters, voice darkly sardonic and she sits up, leaving the secure comfort of his embrace to gaze into his green eyes with her own brown ones, his strange and inhuman face impossibly desirable to all that yearns within her.

"No, you're not," she says simply and as he searches her eyes, his own harden.

"Anytime you wanna give me their names…" He's deadly serious and it thrills her as much as it scares her. She knows he's itching to go after them, to pound them to pulp and all in her name and it feels like love, even if it isn't. It's something like love; he cares. Maybe if she waits long enough, it will be love. Maybe if she never tells him, maybe if she keeps him wondering and waiting and jonesin' to avenge her, all that frustrated anger at the men who've hurt her will turn to love, just for her. And it will be only her he thinks about.

"I got you now," she says, stroking his cheek with the back of one hand. "I've forgotten them, you should too."

She hasn't forgotten them. Everything they've done to her is like a stain that won't wash off, indelibly stamped into her soul, and he knows it. He takes her hand within his own, kisses it, never taking his eyes from her face.

"Never," he promises her, and molten warmth floods her. She supposes it is broken and sick to seek validation like this, but at least his attention is fully hers. For a moment she wonders if he ever compares her to Amber the way she compares him to Julio. Then she wonders if she comes out on top, like he does – or if all he can see is the many ways she is not like his first love, and that's the real reason why, in the end, he doesn't love her. Only cares.

It's unbearable and she dives back into his arms, pushing her face against the unyielding armour that seems as normal to her now as a man's hairy chest once did. She doesn't know what he thinks, what he figures the cause of her sudden distress is, but she doesn't care because he strokes her hair and holds her close and she knows, at least right then, he's not thinking of _her_.


	9. Chapter 9

**2004**

"Raphael's got a girlfriend," Michelangelo tells her as they share a six pack of vodka cruisers and look over the river.

Angel feels her heart go still, her hand arrested halfway to another bottle of raspberry.

"They're having sex," Michelangelo continues, gazing out over the Hudson, which sparkles under the moonlight as though it isn't putrid with pollution.

Angel can't say anything. She knows she should say something, make some wry remark, act somewhat normal like this news doesn't bother her at all, but the truth is her gut is upending so rapidly she thinks if she opens her mouth, she'll puke.

Michelangelo glances at her, his round eyes midnight blue to match the sky, and she senses rather than sees the searching in his gaze.

"You still got a thing for him?" he queries, a little surprised. She'd never been able to hide it from Mikey. He'd seen it straight off, with that funny perceptiveness he could unexpectedly be capable of. It snaps her out of it.

"No," she retorts, and yanks the alcopop out of the pack aggressively.

Mikey doesn't say anything, just puts his arm around her and she doesn't protest, only leans into him and together they gaze out across the water painted in flickering shadows of indigo and silver.

"What's she like?" she asks after a while.

Michelangelo doesn't reply straight away, and that makes her sit up straight again. Love or hate, Mikey always knows how he feels about people.

"She's – okay," he says slowly, after a long pause. "I mean, I like her just fine. I don't think she's any good for Raph, though."

Angel's heart is thudding strangely, blood prickling in her cheeks.

"Why not?"

Mikey gathers his knees up to his plastron, slings his arms over the top of them. Around them a warm breeze swirls, lifting the tails of his mask, catching up strands of her hair so that they trail across her face.

"Well, she's a prostitute."

Somehow, Angel isn't surprised. Raphael had always been a champion of the underdog, and you didn't get much more underdog than a hooker. What does surprise her is Mikey's prejudice.

"Lots of good girls trick a bit," she points out, trying to make it sound impersonal, nonchalant, whilst realising she can never tell Michelangelo that she works too, and she'd kinda been wanting to, had been wanting to share that secret with someone who wouldn't judge her, except she knows now Mikey would and it hurts more than she ever expected.

"Can you really imagine Raph being okay sharing his pussy?" Mikey quips and Angel punches his arm, knowing he's being crude on purpose, trying to lighten the atmosphere. But somewhere in there is a very valid point and it sends a shock down her spine. She'd worked the streets the whole Saturday night just past. What if Raphael ever saw…

And then it hits her, the unfairness of it all. Not only has Raphael got a girlfriend, something she never expected would happen to him unless she finally made her move, but the girl's a hooker and Raphael knows it – and is with her anyway. Even though he must hate it. Meanwhile, she's been busting her ass to keep her secret and practically throwing herself on him and it's like he's never even seen her.

"She's a drug addict too," Mikey continues, and that makes Angel start. "She's kinda completely fucked up, actually. Which is probably why Raph is into her, but I don't think it's gonna be good for him. He's been a total mess since Leo left and even getting laid regularly doesn't seem to be helping. Except he chases me less," he added as an afterthought.

"What does she look like?" Angel asks him as though she hadn't heard him, heedless that it's a strange question and unconnected to what Mikey's been saying. She has to know.

Mikey shot her a little look, but answered, "Uh. She's not pretty. She's, like, scary skinny. And totally covered with freckles. Next level – head to toe. She's got beautiful hair though – super long and red."

Angel just sits there, the vodka cruiser held aloft and forgotten in her hand, her eyes staring, unseeing, out to the distance, her heart a sallow lump in her throat.

She knows exactly who Michelangelo is talking about.

Amber.

Everyone knows Amber. Amber is fucking famous.

Amber is one of those girls who's a fixture on the streets, out most every night, working dusk til dawn. As ugly and skinny as she is, she rarely has a bad night, working with all the fervent dedication only a junkie can muster, a pro's pro who has the magic touch for reeling the clients in. She attracts junkie fetishists and tourists wanting the full squalid experience of a strung out street hooker by the dozens, her bony frame and splendid hair gliding effortlessly through the streets, the crowds parting to admit her, ever-present cigarette drooping from her lips, seeming untouchable and beyond all the filth and clamour even as she occupies it absolutely. She's known for being kind to other working girls and kids, but just as known for brawling and viciousness. There are a lot of stories about her – the last one Angel heard, she chased down a couple of yuppie kids who had been causing trouble, chased them into the middle of the road, where one had stumbled, and she'd kicked and spat at him until a couple of other girls hauled her off. She's scary. Angel has always avoided her.

And Raphael was seeing her.

Suddenly, Angel is crying, her head drooping over her lap as big, fat tears roll down her cheeks and her shoulders shake, and she can't seem to even be quiet about it, embarrassing hacking sobs echoing off the gutted window frame they perch in of the decrepit old brownstone, but right then even her pride doesn't matter. She didn't need to learn something like this, not on the same day she realised exactly what those grown-ass men had done to her kid-self four years ago. Maybe if she'd gone ahead and told Raphael about it, he'd have chosen her instead. Maybe if she hadn't tried so hard to pretend she wasn't completely fucked up, Raphael would have been interested in her. Maybe she wouldn't have to keep settling for Marcuses and Jeromes and Emmanuelles.

Mikey's arms are around her and she's turning towards him, surrendering to the embrace gratefully even as she wishes the familiar plastron was a more heavily pocked and scarred one, that the muscular arms that encircle her were bigger and harder still. She wonders if Raphael is embracing Amber somewhere in the city right then, and she cries harder and Mikey, bless him, doesn't say a word.


	10. Chapter 10

**2008**

"Angel!" April smiles warmly from the shop window where she is arranging a display of hand-painted china with twenty-four carat gold trim in an antique cabinet. "Great to see you!"

"Hey April," Angel can't help but smile in return, weaving her way through the carefully selected antiquities to where April comes forward to envelop her in a firm hug. Angel shuts her eyes and breathes in the familiar scents of shea butter, aloe vera and Samsara. "Been too long, huh?"

"Way too long," April agrees, releasing the younger woman and stepping back, regarding her with fond affection. "Let's go have some tea."

Angel has never been much of a tea drinker, but there's something about the way April makes it, so she nods agreeably and waits as April locks the door of the once-junk shop she has painstakingly transformed to a trove of rare treasures over years of dogged work; then follows her to the back of the shop and up the tiny, winding staircase to the apartment above.

She thinks perhaps it goes back to the first day they met. Casey had brought her over not so long after the whole Purple Dragon thing on a bitter late autumn afternoon. Angel had sat quietly at the green formica table, scratched and faded with age, and tried not to stare. She had never seen a black woman with red hair before and April's fell to her waist, allowed to grow natural in endless layered rows of spiralled curls. She was later to learn April spent more time and energy caring for that hair than she did any other aspect of her appearance – not that she needed to. Her grace and beauty as she moved smoothly around the dingy old-fashioned kitchen, fetching cups and scooping tea leaves into a pot, arranging cookies on a plate and slapping Casey's hand away to ensure Angel got first choice, had overwhelmed her. But in the end, it was April's kindness and generosity of spirit that had made her truly understand why all the turtles got a little misty-eyed whenever April's name come up. Within a few minutes of being in April's presence, Angel was sure she'd crawl across hot coals naked for her.

"I don't know, Casey," April had said reluctantly, turning her tea cup between two slender dark hands. "I can't really afford to take on any staff – plus the turtles are always happy to help."

"But this would be good for Angel, April!" Casey had insisted from where he leant against the scuffed door frame, one ankle crossed over the other, pushing greasy locks of hair back over his ear. "She needs a positive female role-model around." At that, Angel had rolled her eyes – how did a bonehead like Casey even know that kinda phrase? - and April had lightly raised her brows. "Her gran ain't up to workin' and any little bit would help!" Casey had scratched the back of his head and gave April his best puppy dog eyes.

Angel's lips had twisted in a cynical smirk as she realised Casey had as much brought her round to get in good with April as to help her out, but April's brow had puckered and she'd shot Angel a thoughtful glance across the table. Angel had bridled, fixed a scowl on her face and was glad her hands were no longer full of double chocolate chip cookies – it wouldn't exactly help the look of tough indifference she was going for.

"Don't need no charity, lady," she had drawled. "Just want a little work experience. But no big deal."

April's full pink lips had twitched a little, but there was a glimmer of compassion in her green eyes. Angel had stared at her defiantly and shrugged, like she wasn't suddenly desperate to do just about anything for this stunning woman and her fountain of incredible hair, if only for a smile. No big fucking deal.

"Well," April had said slowly. "There are definitely things around here that could use a more delicate touch. I couldn't pay you very much," she continued warningly. "And it wouldn't be every weekend. But it sure would be nice to have another girl around now and then."

The work had turned out to be fun, and April let her keep a few things that took her fancy – like a cool Bakelite dresser set in foamy pale green, some fine lace gloves she cut the fingers out of, an iridescent glass perfume bottle and her pick of just about any of the records people dropped off by the crateful, which she'd play on Tata's ancient old stereo so loud Mr. Martinez downstairs would poke the ceiling with a broom handle. It was nice for Angel to be around an older woman who didn't try and tell her what to do – like the teachers at school – or who wasn't so old that she was totally out of touch – as much as Angel loved her tata, there was only so much they could talk about. April was gentle and good-humoured, interested without being intrusive, understanding and non-judgemental, and for the first time in her life, Angel had found herself opening up to an adult. She had even come close to confiding to April about the whole Purple Dragon thing, but then Marcus had happened and weekend jobs suddenly seemed way less important when there were rakish, handsome boyfriends to make out with. April hadn't pried, but she had dropped by the apartment one evening with an armful of records she said she thought Angel might like. Later, she'd found several strips of condoms amidst them, as well as a flyer to a clinic she could get free birth control from. She'd been too embarrassed to even text a thank you.

Now she sits at a stained oak table that has long replaced that battered old relic from the sixties, and watches as April again moves gracefully around a kitchen that no longer has peeling and yellowed wallpaper or cheap plastic cupboards, getting together the fixings for tea. But as April scoops tea leaves of French Earl Grey into the pot however, Angel notices it is still the same old red anodised one she remembers, and nostalgia wells in a comforting fug and she finds herself choking on all the things she wants to say.

"So what's been happening?" April allows Angel to pace the conversation in her typically generous way, and as badly as she needs to talk, Angel isn't quite ready yet, and is grateful.

"Same old, same old," she replies, takes the fat red mug April pushes towards her, and inhales the fragrant steam. And easily, naturally, the conversation unfolds. No one has ever made Angel feel listened to the way April does, and it's so simple to share the minutiae of her life and unravel its significance in thoughtless chatter.

"How are things with you and Raphael?" April asks, sensing Angel's readiness, giving her an opening.

"Oh you know," Angel rolls her eyes. "He's still hung up on his ex, but other than that, just peachy."

April gazes at her across the table from green eyes made the more brilliant by the darkness of her skin, and her expression one of silent understanding. Angel knows that if Raphael has confided to anyone, it has been to April. All of the turtles adore this woman, the first human they befriended, who stepped so willingly and generously into the role of a nurturer, a friend, a sister and a collaborator, but Raphael is devoted to her with a fierce intensity made all the more profound by how jealously he guards it. But for as little as he gives away, Angel knows that the closest he and Casey have ever come to falling out it has always been over April, over Casey not treating her the way Raphael thinks he should.

Then April sighs, twists the engagement ring on her finger around, reminding Angel she is no stranger to heartache herself – the wedding has been postponed three or four times by now – gazes towards the window where the city rises, dim and grey, beyond the vase of chrysanthemums she has placed there.

"He's always had trouble letting go," she says sadly, and Angel is reminded of something similar Mikey once said.

"You ever meet her?" Angel cannot resist, but April shakes her head, red curls quivering.

"I never even knew about her until after," she admits. "I think he was afraid I would… judge."

"But he told you?" Angel is trying to conceal how badly she wants to know. "Himself?"

April regards Angel carefully, folds her slim hands over each other on the table. "Yes, he came to me." She answers the unasked question directly, making the colour rise in Angel's cheeks. "He was very upset," she finishes gently, and her eyes make it clear she won't divulge any more.

She should've expected as much. Part of what inspires all of their devotion to April is her unquestionable trustworthiness. She would no more want April to go blabbing about the things she had shared long afternoons polishing silverware than Raphael would whatever he had confessed to her that secret night known only to the two of them. And both of them know that April never would.

Still, she is dejected, and stares into the dark amber dregs of her mug as on the pale blue wall, the clock ticks suddenly loud in the silence between them. She wants, more than anything, to understand Raphael and why he cannot let go of this strange, cruel girl and love her instead. Not knowing is torture that steadily, interminably chips away at her day by day.

April lifts the red pot and carefully refills their mugs, though Angel suspects by now the tannin will be too bitter for her to stomach, especially on top of this disappointment. Her gaze blurs as she watches wisps of black leaves dance about the mug, stirred up by the stream poured into it. Then April is pushing thick locks of spiralled hair back over her ear, shaking her head.

"She disappeared," April says resignedly. "After they fought. He doesn't know if – if she's alive. That's why he can't forget."

Angel blinks her tears rapidly away, lifts her eyes to April, who is staring at her with quiet sympathy. April reaches out across the table and takes Angel's hand in her own, squeezing it.

"You could be so good for him if he let you," April says, her voice so soft that even in the quiet kitchen, Angel must strain to hear her. "But Angel – is he good for you?"

Angel's heart freezes in her chest and her skin prickles with shock and she can think of nothing at all to say. All she can do is stare at April and her wide green eyes that are dark with sincerity, and try to breathe.

It is the first time she leaves April's company feeling worse than when she arrived.


	11. Chapter 11

**2008**

She's used to her boyfriends coming home a little banged up, but with Raphael it's different.

The others would get into petty fights over stupid shit, nothing at all but macho pride and dick wagging and it took her a long time to realise they picked their battles carefully; nothing that would ever really get out of hand, nothing where they were ever really in any real danger – just enough of a brawl to make them look tough, add a little grit to their posturing.

But with Raphael, it's on a whole other level.

He just can't stop the vigilantism, not altogether. She knows the criminals he goes up against are deadly serious; that they pack deadly serious hardware and aren't afraid to use it, that they're men who have already killed and would kill again in a heartbeat, as easy as pissing or spitting.

So when Raphael comes in, bloody, bruised and battered and with the scent of gunpowder in his sweat, she wants to puke and can barely walk to fetch the first aid kit for the trembling in her knees, every time.

She patches him up while he sits on the toilet, bleeding all over her scuffed bathroom tiles and glowering even though the fact he's there at all means he was the victor, and she doesn't trust herself to speak half the time, just disinfects the wounds, fixes the butterfly strips, wraps the bandages then fetches him a beer followed by a kiss on his snout. Sometimes he jerks back and says "ouch" in a testy sort of way if he's taken a blow or two to the face, but then he'll pull her onto his knee and nuzzle into her breasts and all the tenderness she feels for him wells inside her until it feels like she'll drown from it.

And she imagines what it would feel like if one night he just stopped coming in her window. And none of them ever saw him again.

"When you gonna stop this shit, Raph?" It's the thought that finally prompts her to speak up one night, when there's an especially nasty gash in one thigh, and a fine fissure in one of his costal scutes.

He glares at her where she kneels, carefully cleaning the gash, a note of betrayal in his eye that's masked quickly with irritation.

"Don't you start," he mutters and she cannot help the hot gush of anger, though instinct cautions her against the danger.

"You're gonna get yourself killed," she pushes on and he abruptly rises and strides away, back into the main room, leaving her feeling like a fool on the tiles by the stained ceramic of the narrow bathtub, bloody gauze in her hands. She leaps to her feet and goes after him, wanting him to understand how scared she is of losing him, how much she loves him.

"Don't you care that if affects the rest of us?" she challenges him, her heart pounding a warning beat she ignores even as her hands tingle and get numb. "Doesn't that matter to you?"

Something about what she's saying is getting to him, but not the way she wants it to. He throws her a furious glare and rounds his shoulders, his legs astride and she can see how tensed he is, his muscles bulging and his head down and her knees buckle and she puts a hand on the bathroom door frame for support. Fuck, he's so angry.

"I didn't realise I was fuckin' Leonardo," he growls and she wants to be angry because a comment like that deserves every ounce of rage she's ever felt but he's just so fucking angry and all she can see right then is Julio.

"Okay," she says quietly, lowering her eyes. "Sorry."

There's nothing but stunned silence between them for a long moment, but she doesn't dare lift her gaze.

Finally, he snorts, shifts his weight.

"'Okay'?" he repeats, incredulity and frustration layering his voice. "'Sorry'?"

She shrugs, still not looking at him; then retreats back into the bathroom to pack up the first aid kit. His heavy steps thunder across the uneven floorboards and too late she realises she's trapped in the tiny room.

"What the hell?" he explodes from the door. "You're just gonna take that?"

She doesn't look up, just continues to repack the first aid kit with painstaking care, carefully fitting each item into its place. Her heart is thundering and her chest is tight, each breath strained. There are spots dancing in front of her eyes and her hands are numb and shaking.

"What's the fuckin' matter with you?" he continues. "Why don't you ever fuckin' fight back anymore?"

It isn't the first time he's tried to pick a fight with her because he wants a screaming match, is searching for an outlet for whatever else is pissing him off. And it's not the first time she's quietly folded, only to leave him confused and impotent, disappearing out the window to vent his rage some other way. He's trying to pick a fight because he thinks she's still the same girl he knew a few years ago, before Julio, the girl who would glare him straight in the eye and give him lip. The girl who didn't even scream at first sight of him. The girl who was always ready to rib him when she came around to the lair and he'd be skulking around, brooding and irritable, cheerfully baiting him into a sniping match that eventually had him smirking despite himself. The girl who bailed him up when she was just fourteen and reamed him out for beating down the kids who committed petty crimes in order to survive, hands on her hips and scowl on her face, a fraction of his size but utterly fearless as he recoiled from her childish fury, his eyes wide and stunned. "You of all people should know better, Raphael," she'd railed at him. "Why don't you find some real criminals to pick on?" And he'd actually listened to her.

But she's not that girl anymore. She hasn't been for a long time. And if she's really honest with herself, it started long before Julio. Men had been steadily chipping her down her whole life, starting with those child-raping Purple Dragons, then gross pervert old foster fathers and a string of useless boyfriends who saw her as nothing more than a meal ticket and free pussy, who pandered to her childish ego by praising her fire and fierceness, crooning about how she was the only girl who could take them. It's only been lately she's realised all those times she thought she was standing up for herself she was just creating reasons to feel okay about everything that had happened to her.

She can feel Raphael's presence looming and remembers with sickening vividness how unyielding the muscle of his arms is and now her hands are fumbling useless with the first aid kit, trying to latch the lid.

"Are you even listening to me?" Raphael takes a step towards her and she flinches.

And there's another long silence, like the calm before the storm and her heart is pounding so hard she thinks it might break.

"You think –" when Raphael speaks, his voice is breathless with fury and disbelief – and hurt, most of all, pain that makes her flinch again and his voice cracks as he continues. "You think I'd _hit_ you?"

She's trembling too hard to reply, but it doesn't matter because he's gone.


	12. Chapter 12

**2005**

One night, Angel just can't help herself. She goes up and speaks to Amber.

"Hey," she says lightly, outside Lenny's Vintage Vinyl, where Amber has staked her claim for almost seven years, David Bowie's cover of Across the Universe drifting through the golden rectangle of light that is the doorway, rising thinly above the din and clash of the neon-choked streets at night.

Amber slowly, slowly, turns her head to meet Angel's eyes directly and it's hard for her not to blanch. The blue and blood shot eyes that gaze into hers are hard and cold and the chapped lips are set in an unsmiling line. She stares straight into Angel and doesn't say a word and though Angel knows she's got at least sixty pounds on Amber, the bitch would take her down easy if it ever came to that. She'd fight mean and dirty.

"Got a cigarette?" Angel asks, even though she doesn't smoke. Amber remains silent, steadily lifts her cigarette to her lips and takes a long drawl, then exhales slowly straight into Angel's face.

"Fuck off," Amber finally speaks and her voice is low and deadly.

Angel wants to start something but she knows it's better not to. Better not to get her ass kicked, better not to get picked up by the cops. Better Amber doesn't carry tales of a purple-haired Hispanic girl picking a fight back to Raphael. So she lowers her eyes and walks away, half a block down where she lingers and watches Amber and tries to understand what Raphael sees in her. She ain't pretty, not even a little bit – her fair skin is all crammed with freckles and her eyes are sunken and her cheekbones protrude. But underneath all that freckle her skin is lily white and there are plenty of guys around who'd pick a girl who looked like she'd been hit with a sledgehammer, if she were white enough, over a pretty dark-skinned girl. She doesn't think Raphael would be like that, but who knows, especially when it comes to men. She's so skinny – too skinny, way too skinny – no hips, no ass, no tits, her thighs like long spokes sticking out beneath the ragged hem of her dress. Is Raphael into that? Unconsciously she crosses her arms across her own body, feeling conspicuously huge and uncomfortable, second-guessing the intention behind the blare of every car horn. She's short too, almost certainly shorter than Raphael, and that's another blow. Cos men like their women to look up at them – men like Raphael especially like their women to look up at them, and Angel is taller than him.

And she doesn't know what the hell is going on when she could look at an ugly, bony junkie with no tits or ass and feel inadequate, except that right then she kinda hates Raphael.

She can't understand what Raphael sees in that mean, tough little bitch until the roar of a motorcycle engine rips the night and then the Nightwatcher is tooling to a stop in front of Amber's spot and Amber is suddenly smiling, beaming, her face transformed with the brilliance of that smile as she clatters into the street and throws herself onto the back of the bike, her arms tight around the Nightwatcher's thick waist.

And Angel realises all at once that Raphael is the Nightwatcher, and Amber loves him.


	13. Chapter 13

**2008**

She seeks him out at the lair, is unsurprised to find him pummelling the punching bag in the dojo, face thunderous, sweat drenched and panting.

"I don't think you'd hit me, Raphael," she says and he shoots her an angry glare and she can see the hurt beneath it, the profound sense of betrayal he feels. "I know you wouldn't." She doesn't want the fight but she doesn't want to let him go on believing she feels that way. She loves him too much.

"Then what the hell was that?" he rounds on her, perspiration flying, teeth bared. "You're doing it now!" He gestures with a flung out arm and she knows she twitches; she just can't help it, it's like a fucking Pavlov's dog response. "Like hell you don't think that."

"I don't," she entreats him, and it breaks her heart how easily he can believe the worst about himself, because of course he wouldn't think there were any other reason for her reaction. She wants to make it better, but she doesn't know how – not without having to talk about Julio and even just the thought makes every inch of her cringe away.

"What is it then? Is it cos of what I am?" He's seething, all the more to hide his fear, and anguish threatens to choke her as she realises how closely that anxiety must always linger near the surface.

She wants to reassure him, but she knows she'll break down if she tries to speak and she's struggling to cling to some fragile strip of dignity. But her silence only enrages him more; he takes it for confirmation.

"Fuck you!" he shouts, and she's gulping back the tears, even as the inevitable tremble begins and her chest starts to tighten once more. "Fuck you, Angel. If that's how you fuckin' feel, then – "

Then Michelangelo is there, as if from nowhere, stepping between them with anger etched into his usually cheery face, dead serious for a change.

"Back off, Raph," he warns his brother and Angel can see he's more than ready to get physical if he needs to, his body tense and poised to strike. It takes a lot to piss Mikey off, but when he is he can be as ruthless as Leonardo. "Can't you see you're scaring her?"

"Oh, you too?" Raphael turns his fury on his little brother, who stands his ground with a glower that looks misplaced on his face. "_You_ think I'd hit her now?"

"No," Michelangelo replies evenly. "But maybe this isn't about you, Raphael."

It silences Raphael, who seems capable only of staring uncertainly at Michelangelo whilst behind them Angel yearns to blink out of existence, her cheeks burning with shame as she watches realisation slowly dawn on Raphael's face. Michelangelo turns to her, his expression grave and sincere.

"I'm sorry, Angel," he says softly, because he'd promised her he'd never tell and he's just gone and good as told. She doesn't push him away when he puts an arm around her.

Raphael is staring at her now, green eyes round and stricken, and she wants to die beneath the weight of that stare because now he's not even seeing her, now he's just seeing the victim, he's seeing her in a way that she never, ever wanted him to see her and he's never going to look at her the same again.

Then his eyes narrow and start to burn as once more his anger gathers, worse than before, palpable in its intensity, seeming to transform the air around them, and she quails.

"Who is he?" he snarls. "Tell me."

"Raph – " Mikey begins, annoyed and exasperated as Angel shakes her head hopelessly.

"Shut up, Mike," Raph barks, and fixes his glare on Angel once more. "Tell me who he is, Angel, he's not gonna get away with this."

"Raph, it's not the time." Mikey's arm tightens around her shoulders and she's sure if he lets go, she'll collapse. Raphael ignores him, too suffused with his own righteous fury to see that he's right.

"Angel, I swear, I will kill any man who's ever laid a hand on you."

"That's a long fuckin' list!" The words blurt from her lips before she even realises she's said them and then she's sobbing, wretched and keening, her whole body shaking from the effort, her face crumpling and Michelangelo is wrapping his arms around her and she's bawling into his neck, loud and helpless though she wishes she could stop, wishes she'd never started.

When Raphael comes to her side, she can tell that Michelangelo doesn't want to release her, that he's as angry at his brother as he's ever been, but she can't help it; she loves him and she wants him, so she turns to Raphael and collapses gratefully into his massive arms as he holds her tight and lets her cry against him.


	14. Chapter 14

**2008**

"You wanna talk to me about it?"

What he means is, _'I want you to tell me about it'_. He would never put it that way, of course. Never ask for that sort of intimacy in a way that might betray any sort of vulnerability – he hates that he didn't know. Hates that she kept it from him. Hates that he never stopped it, even though he was too busy being tail deep inside that junkie bitch at the time.

"No," she replies shortly, unable to keep the jerk of defensiveness from her voice and she jabs at the remote control, deliberately not looking at him, the enormous flatscreen she'd bought when she was cashed up flickering wild technicolour as she cycles rapidly through the stations. The presence of Raphael's emotions is so immense she can feel his body react, from the tightening of his jaw to the tensing of his muscles; no need to look.

"This bastard used to beat you!" he explodes, frustrated and furious, and she flinches and turns her head away, resenting how his aggression triggers a series of automatic responses in her body – the pattering heart, the shortened breath, the tightness in her chest – even though it's her he wants to protect.

"Yeah, I was there," she snaps back bitterly, unable to keep the waver from her voice and instantly he is remorseful, moving closer to put an arm around her and drawing her to him.

"Hey, hey, I'm sorry," he says gently and she has to fight hard against the urge to turn in against him, let him just soothe her. She's tired of being so goddamn weak all the time and now she knows he's never going to push her to fight back against him again, not anymore. She's just something broken now, to be treated like she might just fall apart completely if he doesn't handle her with the utmost care and she can't bear it because she knows, even if he doesn't, that he's never going to love her if he feels like he has to hold himself back all the damn time. It makes her sick, sick of herself and her own frailty. And it makes her sick that a part of him likes it, likes her needing him so much, likes that he can look after her like some big tough guy, likes that she's never gonna run away and leave him behind even though he'll never love her because of it.

She's prompted by bitterness and spite to speak: "You dig this, don't you? Playing my hero?"

She can tell by the way he abruptly lets go of her that he hadn't even realised it himself yet, and it appals him to be confronted by it.

"No," he says defensively, angrily, rising to his feet. "Funnily enough, seeing you hurt ain't my idea of a good time, Angel."

"Then why you gotta keep pushing me about this? You think it's gonna change anything?"

He's glaring at her with that stony glower he adopts whenever he's feeling hurt; he thinks no one knows, thinks he hides it so well.

"I think I could give him a taste of his own fuckin' medicine!" he retorts rudely. "I think this asshole shouldn't get away with it. I think any bullying prick who beats on a girl should be taken out." He stares at her, still glowering, then slices his hands through the air in a definitive punctuation. "End of story."

For all that he comprehends the twisted ambiguities of the world, justice is usually brutally simple to Raphael. She finds it at once endearing and frightening.

She stares at him where he stands, practically vibrating with rage and righteousness and that bloodlust she can't deny is a part of him. He stares back at her with gritted teeth and flames burning in those green eyes, a fire he needs to unleash lest it consume him, scorch and shrivel his heart altogether. That glare entreats her, urges her with its relentlessness to give in. She's suffused by resentment for his need; in his desire to avenge her he is blind to how these conversations distress her, how forcing her to remember it all _is_ hurting her. He's so wrapped up in his own emotional turmoil, it's as though she's incidental to it all, and she'll be damned if she's going to babysit him through his torment when _she_ was the one who lived through it.

She is tempted to push him into a real temper, provoke him into yelling at her, losing his shit, if only to escape this unbearable standoff, if only so she can pretend to herself he'll be able to love her one day. But he'll hate himself for it later, because he'll be the asshole who yelled at his traumatised girlfriend, and she figures it won't do them any good at all.

So instead she swallows hard and gets control of her emotions, her throat wobbling from the effort, her eyes burning.

"It happened, it's done, nothing will change that," she says in a voice so measured it's painfully clear she's only just keeping it together, and his expression cracks with concern for an instant and she thinks he might be about to catch on. But then he becomes rageful again, spinning on a heel to pace the cramped apartment, swearing under his breath.

"Where the fuck was Mikey when all this was happenin', anyway? He fuckin' knew about it!" he demands, and though she suspects he isn't really asking her so much as casting about for an acceptable target for his frustration, she is compelled to defend her best friend.

"It's not his fault, I asked him not to do anything," she says, her hands wringing hard in her lap as though by crushing the bones of her fingers between each other she won't lose control, her words woefully understating the scene that had occurred between Michelangelo and herself when he'd found out. It was easy enough to avoid seeing him while she and Julio had been together; Julio had moved in, she was either with him or working all the time – no chance to hang out. They still spoke on the phone pretty often (when Julio wasn't around and she'd had Mikey's number saved under 'Isabella') and she'd been so preoccupied with making sure he never suspected the truth that it never occurred to her to wonder how he felt about it all. He'd sussed something was up and dropped in on her one night not long after Julio had left – he'd been keeping watch and waiting – only to find her with a fat lip and a black eye and it had been all she could do to stop him going after Julio right then and there. She'd begged him, on her knees, and she can't stand to remember it.

"Why the fuck would you do that, Angel?" Raphael blurts, exasperated and incredulous and she'd be pleased he's not crooning in her ear like she's made of glass if it wasn't for how ashamed she feels, if it wasn't for the fact he just won't fucking stop and leave it alone. "What was the fucking point of protecting this sonuvabitch?"

"Because I loved him," she can't help the words bursting out, though her voice remains low and pressed through gritted teeth. "Because I was that dumb bitch in love with a man who used to kick the shit out of me. Okay?"

And it's only now, saying it, that she realises just how much she hates herself for it.

Finally, he looks at her properly. Finally, he sees the toll this is taking on her. And at once his anger flees, leaving only the best of him behind.

He's kneeling on the carpet in front of her, taking her by her shoulders in that gently firm grip beneath which lurks a terrifying, exhilarating strength. She won't look at him, afraid that if she does the tears will start and for just once she wants to not fucking cry.

"Hey," he says, gently, firmly. "You weren't dumb." He's ducking his head to peer into her face, pushing her to meet his eyes. "Jerks like that – they got ways of trickin' girls. They have, like, a script they follow, like a brain washin' thing. It's not your fault. You weren't dumb."

She kinda wants to laugh. She's being schooled on the politics of domestic violence by fucking Raphael Hamato, the mutant turtle who would rather do five hundred push ups than read a book? But then, she realises, of course, he's just regurgitating shit Amber told him – Amber who was always happy to spew rhetoric when she was high enough, lecture the whole goddamn fucking street. And suddenly there is bile in her throat and she has to fight it down.

Finally, she meets his eye and when she does she feels stony within, as though her resolve has numbed her and crusted over her heart. Her eyes are bone dry; the storm she has so long carried inside her has suddenly dispersed, leaving her with a sudden and profound clarity.

"He's in Sing Sing," she says, and doesn't miss the glitter in his eye, thrill that she is finally giving in.

"I can break in," he says darkly and the hint of a wolfish grin hovers on his mouth. He's detected her abruptly different mood, the resolute hardness of her eyes. "No sweat." Telling him won't change anything about what Julio did to her, but it will change what he _might_ do.

"His name is Julio Batista," she continues, her low voice foreign to her own ears. "And I'm afraid he will kill me when he gets out."

Rapahel's face glimmers and twists with a curious combination of elation and vicious intent and she tips forward and rests her cheek on his shoulder so she doesn't have to look at it and his arms go around her and hold her tight to him but she might as well be hugging herself for all the comfort she feels. Now, finally, he feels he can do something for her, something to compensate for the damage done to her by the men who've ripped through her life when he wasn't paying attention, maybe even to compensate for the fact he doesn't love her, as though somehow it will tip the scales into balance, or prove something to her, or to himself. He'll hurt Julio, kill him probably, and then he will feel better about everything, and wonder why she still flinches when he loses his temper, why she still shakes and cows instead of fighting back, why she still has nightmares she won't talk to him about.

"No one will ever fuckin' touch you again," he whispers his promise fiercely into her ear and then she's sorry, because she's not being entirely fair - he's angry too, truly angry, that she's been hurt, truly determined to try and stop it from happening again and this is the only way he knows how, or at least the only way he really feels works. He's stroking her hair and pressing kisses against her head and she can feel the fierce caring in them and knows the fact he hasn't already ducked out the window shows that he wants to be there for her, that this _is_ more about her than it is about him and she's grateful for it. Once again her heart softens, that bitter crust crumbling away as he patiently curls up with her on the couch and watches _True Blood,_ his fingers idling in her hair, and though she knows he is far away, she can at least be content it is not Amber he is thinking about this time, but all the bloody damage he will do to Julio in her name.

She is still awake when he rises from the bed some dark hour of the night, but continues to feign sleep as he straps on his pads and mask and slips out of the window. She lays there in the space he has left behind on sheets rich with his scent, waiting to feel something as she reflects on the fact this is Julio's last night on earth. But the truth is that his seeking vengeance on her life was a fear so horrible she never allowed herself to truly acknowledge it, and now there won't be any reason for her to fear. It's over. Just like that. How can she feel anything when it's done with so quickly, before she's even had a chance to contemplate it at all?

He's waiting for her when she gets home from work the next night and kisses her so gently and tenderly she can scarcely believe he killed a man the night before. And since he doesn't mention it, she decides not to think about it.


	15. Chapter 15

**2001**

Truthfully, she'd thought Raphael was an asshole the first time she met him.

Brusque, gruff and standoffish, he'd radiated hostility in a way that got her hackles right up. Hey, it wasn't like she was creamin' to be friends with him! He needn't act like such a hot shot. He was just some big, dumb meathead who cared about nothing but brawling and his biceps. Big deal. So what if he was some big mutant freak. She'd met a million guys just like him already.

But then, when her brother had disappeared and she'd gone to the turtles for help, it had been Raphael who had hugged her and comforted her, his raspy voice gentle and caring, and it had been so long since a guy had been anything but mean to her (the Purple Dragon story had got around at school) that she'd choked and drenched his plastron with hot tears, clinging to those big dumb biceps for all she was worth, forgetting for a moment to be tough.

And after that, her heart started to flutter whenever she saw him. Even though he was a big mutant freak.

Raphael brooded and raged and was constantly in trouble, at home, on the streets, and pretty much everywhere else he went. She knew enough to know the turtles' lives had been plenty hard, that starvation or death from exposure had been a constant hovering threat for many years of their youth; that they had to remain hidden from the world lest they be locked up and tested on – or worse. That though they were teenagers, only a couple of years older than her, they couldn't go to school or make friends, couldn't even walk down the street to the movies. So she understood why he was so angry.

Shit, she was plenty angry too, and she was just a normal girl.

That first Christmas after her grandmother had died and Ryan was in prison, when the turtles had asked her to spend it with them, she and Raphael had spent the day joined at the hip. It had started when he had held her hand to lead her to the lair while she was blindfolded and the size of his huge paw wrapped around her own had caused her to tingle all over in a way that made her feel at once excited and fearful, like she was taking a huge risk even being near him. He hadn't wanted to show her around at first, but her unabashed awe at the home they had they had built far below the city had softened him up. He'd shared the last of the cookie batter with her, shown her the drum kit he'd scrounged together from countless rummages at the junk yard, and even watched _The Nightmare Before Christmas _with her while they all waited for Mikey to show. They'd conspired to help Casey get a kiss out of April and she'd thrilled to feel his muscular thigh pressed against hers where they sat on the pipes high above the others in the enormous underground chambers the turtles had made their home, and tugged the mistletoe along the makeshift pulley they'd assembled together. He'd told her gruffly to sit tight; then he'd jumped down and landed with an effortless grace on the flagstones below, before turning and holding his arms out for her.

She'd hesitated only a second before making the leap and he caught her easily and the strength in those arms made her swoon for the first time over a guy she actually knew, who wasn't in the movies.

It didn't seem to matter he was a mutant turtle. The guys at school were all assholes. And Raphael could take any of them down without breaking a sweat. Plus there was something kinda romantic about it – if she had a thing for bad boys because they existed outside the margins, then no one was further out than Raphael. A mutant turtle _and_ a rebel, a double dose of tormented isolation that made his brooding angst and macho swagger all the more enticing to her teenaged self.

She'd come to the lair shortly after the new year with a plan in mind. There was an abandoned train carriage at the Harlem Yard whose interior had been meticulously covered in the wildest, most brilliant graffiti she'd ever seen. It was right up Raphael's alley, and once she got him there she could show him the things she'd learned with the Dragons – he was sixteen, and a guy, so he had to be horny and he'd sure to be impressed at how mature and sophisticated she was.

She'd skipped up to him where he was doing push-ups in a corner of the large, open plan area that was their communal space, balancing his weight on the pommels of his sai, and openly admired the flex and stretch of his musculature as he rose and fell.

"Shouldn't you be in school?" he huffed, after glancing sideways at her. She stuck a hip out and cocked her head at him.

"What, are you my mother now?" she replied pertly. Truth was, she skipped school most of the time these days. It was unbearable.

He came to a finish and bounced easily to his feet and her lips had twitched, her cheeks flushing as she recalled how they'd sat on one of the ripped up, sagging old couches together in the dark at Christmas while they all watched _It's A Wonderful Life_ and laughed at the movie, which seemed saccharine and painfully outdated to their misfit selves, buzzed on the single glass of champagne Master Splinter had permitted. They were shushed time and time again, but it only cracked them up more and it was only April's warning they'd be separated that had finally gotten them under control. Angel had slipped her hand into Raphael's and he'd held it lightly, as though if he pressed too hard they might get caught, and she'd felt giddy on way more than the champagne. How was it that the best guy she'd ever met was a giant freak turtle who lived in the sewers?

Raphael shot her a look as he jammed his sai back into his belt and she tossed her pigtailed hair back over her shoulder.

"So – you wanna come hang out? I found this really cool place over in Harlem, it's – "

"I don't hang out with kids," he broke in shortly, turning away from her. "Go play with Mikey."

She felt his brusqueness like a kick to the ribs and wondered what the fuck could've happened between then and Christmastime to make him hate her. Maybe he'd heard the Purple Dragon story too. She'd tingled and gone numb all over as panicked adrenaline coursed through her body at the thought, but she swallowed hard and called as flippantly as she could to his retreating shell as he vanished towards the stairs that led to the bedrooms above.

"Well, okay, it's your loss."

Mikey had been thrilled to hang out with her and as the months stretched out they had grown steadily closer, though she never stopped hitting Raphael up first.

Never stopped until Marcus, that is. And she was sure she'd well and truly gotten over Raphael.

When Marcus turned out to be an asshole loser, it had been Mikey who comforted her. But it was Raphael she gazed at with even greater longing.

Then Jerome had happened, and Emmanuelle. Each time she thought she'd finally got the cure for what ailed her, only to find herself discontent and bitterly brooding on her slacker boyfriend, unable to stop herself from stacking him up against a mutant turtle that lived in the sewers and didn't have the time of day for her. She guessed she wasn't good enough for him. Wasn't good enough for anyone but burn-outs and dropkicks. After all, she kept on picking them.


	16. Chapter 16

**2008**

Raphael wants her to take a few days off, go up to Casey's farmhouse with him.

"Look, I ain't any good at dates," he says bluntly, arms folded across his plastron as though he's mad about something, his bulk filling the doorway of the bathroom. "But seems to me it was last fall that you and me – well – y'know – " and he gestures between them, face set in a grim expression and she realises he feels foolish even bringing it up and turns to face him fully from where she is wearily rubbing her makeup off in the reflection of the medicine cabinet mirror. "And I thought it might be nice. If we spent some time together. Alone." He came to an abrupt finish and it might've been funny that he sounded exactly as though he'd suggested they go spend six hours getting root canal work done in his awkward efforts to be sweet and thoughtful, if the depressing weight of reality wasn't bearing down all around her.

"Can't afford to," she says shortly, turning back to the mirror, trying to hide how badly she wants to, how delirious the thought of sleeping in is, long lazy days with nothing to do but cuddle on the porch and watch the leaves fall, wander in the woods, pick apples and make pie… all that cosy bullshit. Trying to hide how much it means to her that he's asked at all, because she hadn't even expected him to remember.

Too late she realises she's shot him down when he was being a sap and he's embarrassed and gets mad to cover it up.

"All you ever do is work," he snaps aggressively, and her own exhaustion frays her nerves to breaking point.

"How do you expect me to survive?" she throws back at him, pushing past him into the main room, stumbling over a pair of boots she's left lying in the middle of the floor. "I got rent to pay! Bills! Living alone in this fuckin' city ain't cheap, even round here. I thought you understood!"

"I understand just fine!" he fires back as she yanks open a dresser drawer and pulls out a pair of pajamas. "What I don't understand is why you gotta schlep so much – the streets can't be that bad!"

She stops chucking clothes off the bed and stares at him where he glowers across the room at her, hands in fists by his sides. Realisation is welling inside her as his words play through her mind, and stunned, she steps towards him.

"Do you – do you think I'm still trickin'?"

It's his turn to look shocked, his rageful expression wiped abruptly from his face by one of confusion. "Well, aren't ya?"

Her heart is pattering a frantic beat against her sternum and her throat constricts. "Not a day since we hooked up."

He just stares at her after that as though he doesn't understand and she shifts her weight and realises she's holding a pair of jeans in her hands and lets them drop to the carpet.

"You mean to tell me," she begins, a buzzing beginning in her ears, her hands moving of their own accord to her temples. "That this whole year we've been together you think I've been workin' – and you haven't said one single damn word to me about it?" Her voice is pitching higher; for once Julio's legacy isn't being paid any mind.

Raphael flings his arms to the side. "Well, why should I?" he retorts defensively and suddenly she is so angry she slams a fist against the wall, the thud echoing dully through the thin plaster.

"_Don't you even fuckin' care?_" she screams at him, properly screams at him for the first time. He's taken aback, but quickly recovers, his own temper quickly rising.

"What the fuck do you even mean?"

"I only stopped because I thought it's what you wanted!" she accuses him tearfully, flinging an arm towards him.

Raphael snorts, shakes his head incredulously, as though she's crazy and it only makes her madder.

"Why would you think that?" He's not yelling yet, but his voice is rising.

"You said it bothered you!"

"It does! But I'm not gonna ask you to go broke just so I can feel better! You think I wanna see you struggle this hard?"

Her chest is heaving and strands of hair are clinging to her wet face as she paces the width of the cramped room and back again, slamming her fist against the wall once more.

"You don't fuckin' care about me at all!" She's shrieking, insensible now with emotion.

"That ain't true!" he hollers back. "I just asked you to – " and he stops and snorts like a bull in a ring as he's reminded of his humiliation.

"You don't even wanna go!" Now she's finally letting it all out, all the fear and anxiety that's ever constricted her mind since they've been together, on some level aware she's hysterical but not caring a damn. "You're just doing what you think you should!"

"I'm - just - ? " he's fuming now, eyes wide and wild, barely able to get the words out in his rage. "I wouldn't ask if I didn't wanna!"

"Why didn't you say anything?" she's stopped screaming but her voice is still a furious, sobbing cry, and her throat is starting to hurt.

It takes him a moment to pick up the thread of their argument, but then he's throwing his arms in the air, exasperated, turning and stomping his foot. "Cos ya got the right not to have to work yourself to the bone!" he shouts at her. "Cos even if it bugs me, I know it's just work. Cos I'm not gonna tell ya what to do!"

Everything he says is fair and true, but it doesn't make her feel any better. Right then his failure to have said anything is just one more way he proves he doesn't love her. It doesn't even matter that if he'd complained about it that would've upset her too. All she wants is for him to want her, to be so crazy with it he couldn't bear the thought of anyone else touching her. His mute acceptance enrages her once more so that she steps towards him, feeling crazed with fury, screaming again, directly into his face:

"I am _not_ that _ugly white bitch_!"

Raphael goes utterly still, tensed from head to toe, eyes locked furiously with hers. Then he turns and strides towards the window.

She breaks and runs after him, heedless of how at last there's nothing at all left of her pride as she grasps hold of him, sobbing so hard she can barely breathe.

"Please don't go! Raphael, please, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

She manoeuvres herself in front of him at the window so he can't get past her unless he pushes her out of the way, clinging to him and sobbing her apologies. He's stiff as rock for what feels like an eternity before finally, incredibly, his hands are lightly pressing against her back and she sobs harder and sags against him. One arm tightens around her a little and the other lifts and then his hand is in her hair, gently stroking.

"C'mon now," he says gruffly, his plastron vibrating against her as he speaks. "Ain't worth all this."

"I'm sorry," she sobs, clinging pathetically to him.

"Shh."

He's manoeuvring her to the couch and she lets him, but holds tight, frightened if she loosens her grip on him even a little, he'll go. She hasn't cried as hard as this in a lifetime and she's blinded by her tears, her throat raw and ragged, her body weak and trembling. He sits down and pulls her onto his lap, holds her close.

"I wanna go so bad," she heaves into his neck. "I love that you asked. I love it so much. But I got this credit card bill – from before – can't hardly seem to make a dent. An' everythin' else," she's hiccoughing, tears still scalding a path down her cheeks, the skin feeling swollen and raw beneath them. She knows she must sound like a hysterical fool but Raphael just turns his face and gently kisses her cheek. "But I wanna go so bad," she finishes, voice hitching in a whine she despises but is powerless to stop.

"Do you wanna work?" he asks her gently and she sits up, swiping at her face with the back of a hand.

"No," she says honestly. "But I fuckin' miss the money."

He takes her face in his hands and looks closely at her, his thumbs gently stroking her cheeks, those green eyes that are capable of such frightening anger, or such startling vulnerability, flickering over her.

"I never woulda asked ya to stop." It seems important to him. She supposes she should be glad. Julio would fly into rages about it, call her a puta and worse, fatten her lip and crow about how she was too ugly to make any money now. Then, when he'd burned through all his own cash, he'd scream at her to get out there and make herself useful, not to come home until she'd made a thousand or more. The memory makes her shudder, causes fresh tears to well.

"But you wanted me to?" She needs to hear it, needs to know he feels that way, even if it is just possessiveness and macho bullshit.

Raphael rolls his eyes a little, grimaces. "Yeah, 'course I _wanted_ you to. Did you hurt your hand?"

He's taking her small brown hand in his enormous green one, the powerful appendage delicately turning it over so he can examine it.

"I think it's okay," she sniffles, draws in a shuddering breath. It hurts, but not that much. It's her heart that continues to heave. Her eyes are burning, salty, stinging tears still running down her face and she knows she must look monstrous; a weepy, emotional wreck of a woman, too needy and too sensitive.

Raphael looks back at her face and something flickers in his eyes, a powerful tenderness that could almost be love, and all at once she's trembling.

"You need time off," he tells her. "You're fuckin' exhausted."

"Can't afford to less I hit the streets again," she replies, wiping fresh tears away, and her skin smarts. "I guess I could…" But even the thought of it makes her cringe; long hours on her feet in weather that was rapidly getting colder, cheapskates trying to bargain for ever lower prices, avoiding the cops, the abuse hurled from the passing cars and drunken pedestrians. Maybe she should try a brothel…

"How 'bout if I gave you some money?" Raphael's rough voice breaks her train of thought and she glances at him, startled. None of her boyfriends have ever offered her money before. All they've ever done is take. For a long time, she had waited for Raphael to ask, but he never did.

He meets her eye, looks away, uncomfortable with putting himself out there, shrugs like it's nothing. "If it'll help."

It would help and she practically vibrates with the desire to accept. But then she is ashamed to be so desperate and brought so low, disgusted by how badly she wants to take it from him like she's some kind of mooch who can't take care of herself.

"I can't," she mumbles, steeling her pride. Raphael chuffs, like he's irritated, like she's being unreasonable.

"Why not?" he demands. "Ain't you my girl?"

And she bursts into tears again, collapsing onto his shoulder, shaking with the force of her sobs.

"Aw jeeze," he mutters, discomfited and chagrined. "I thought it'd help. Stop cryin', baby, please."

"Do you really wanna go away?" she weeps into his neck, feeling the flex of the tendons there as he moves his head to peer at her, his great rough hand smoothing wet strands of hair out of her face.

"Wouldn't have asked otherwise," he says gruffly. "And you need it."

"Okay," she tearfully accedes and he snorts.

"There!" he exclaims. "Wasn't so fuckin' hard, was it?" But there is humour in his voice and she laughs a little as tension suddenly drains from her, like she was clogged with it and has been flushed.

"I'm sorry," she says again, lifting her head and smearing tears from her raw cheeks.

"Shuttup," he replies brusquely, affectionately, in the way only he can, suddenly crushing her close against him, and it occurs to her he's been waiting his whole life for someone to take care of. Then he sighs.

"'M sorry too," he says. 'Though gotta be honest, I'm still not altogether too sure what just happened."

Angel laughs again, harder, because she's not sure either. And then he stands straight up, lifting her like she's weightless, and her tummy tips deliriously as he takes her to the bed where they watch _Sons of Anarchy_ and talk about how they'll get to Northampton, when they'll go, how long they'll stay. She feels drained and frayed at the edges, but he seems to have forgiven, or forgotten, that she broke the cardinal rule, and as they're settling down to sleep he mentions he's glad she hasn't been working, and suddenly everything is a lot better.


	17. Chapter 17

**2002**

"Look, he's my bro and I love him, but – Raph's an asshole, Angel."

She starts and glances at Mikey, who is glaring at her with an exasperated and knowing expression.

"I like assholes," she counters lamely, and Mikey rolls his eyes.

"Yeah, and they've been such a great addition to your life," he says dryly. "Enhanced it in so many ways."

She thinks about punching him in the arm; decides against it. She does that when they're playing around, giving each other shit. This is more than that. And she doesn't want him to think she's okay with it.

"Look, you might be a lil' older than me but I got way more experience in this kinda thing than you do," she retorts snappily. "So I'll thank you to keep your big green snout out of my love life."

Maybe it was too mean a dig, reminding him of what he hasn't had a chance to experience. But his sarcasm hit too close and she wanted to strike back.

Michelangelo gazes at her with those impossibly big blue eyes, wounded and resentful for a moment, but he doesn't say any number of the cutting things he could in retaliation – and there are so very many, a positive litany of observations on the fucked up mess she's made of her life - and it reminds her of how essentially sweet he is and how good a friend he is to her.

"Sorry," she mutters, and lifts the joint to her lips, taking a long drawl.

"Me too," he replies and accepts the joint from her hand. "I just – I just really hate seeing you get hurt, Jewel. And Raph would hurt you."

"It's just a little crush," she shrugs him off, her cheeks burning at how much he has perceived from nothing more than a few longing glances she's thrown Raphael's way when he's passed her by in the lair . "He's never gonna give me a chance to get hurt by him anyway. It's like he don't even see me." And damnit, she's gone and given Mike a whole lot more, in the wistful yearning of her voice.

"He sees you," Mikey says quietly, and Angel shoots him a look as he exhales a gush of pot smoke into the tiny compartment of the rusting train carriage, abandoned in a long forgotten tunnel of the subway system.

"Whaddya mean?" she demands, unable to help the excitement that lances through her chest, her gut fluttering weirdly.

Michelangelo shrugs, deliberately not looking at her, and passes the joint back. "Any guy with a pulse sees you, Jewel. But, you know Raph is completely fucked up, right?"

"He's a good guy," she says stubbornly, forgetting it's only supposed to be a little crush, resisting the urge to grill Michelangelo harder on what he meant because she knows he's holding back and she really is trying not to give herself away – not too much.

"Yeah, he is," Mikey agrees. "But he's also really fucked up. You haven't seen it. Not really."

"But whaddya even mean, 'fucked up', Mike? Fucked up how?" she can push him on this, at least.

Mikey sighs, irritated, once again accepting the joint and she sees he's gonna get the last toke and starts fumbling in her bag for the stuff to roll another, not wanting to lose the buzz.

"Well, lessee, he's got major self-destructive tendencies," Mikey enumerates with feigned breeziness, leaning back on one hand. "He's violet, and aggressive, and moody and impulsive and has one motherfuck of a chip on his shoulder. And unstable. He's really unstable. And – oh my god, Angel, did you just fucking swoon?"

"No!" she cries defensively but takes one look at Mikey's affectionately incredulous face and bursts out laughing. He can't help but smirk at her stoned merriment, even as he makes a point of rolling his eyes.

"That's nothin' I don't know about him," she says as she licks the paper on the fresh joint and sticks it down.

Mikey shrugs, flicks the roach away, leans back against the cushions they've brought there. "He – he clings to shit," he muses quietly. "He just really hangs on. It's not healthy."

"But pretendin' like nothin' is ever, ever wrong is such a well-adjusted way to get through life," she quips, lighting up.

Michelangelo is silent for a moment and then whips his head to face her. "Hey, was that a dig at me?" he demands, and she goes into peals of laughter again, echoing off the peeling orange walls of the carriage. "Very funny," he deadpans, and snatches the joint off her. "I'll have you know my carefree and optimistic perspective on the world is absolutely crucial to sustaining morale on the team." He's feigning haughtiness now, but she's sure there's a note of conviction in there too and wraps her arms around his neck and plants a kiss on his cheek. And he's back in knots around her little finger.

"Raph _is_ straight, right?" she queries him a little while later and Mikey snorts.

"Hyeah," he chuffs. "Like, he doesn't really _proclaim_ it or nothin', but I've seen his porn stash."

"Stolen from his porn stash, you mean," she digs and Mikey assents with a nod of the head and a coy smirk. "I did wonder about him and Casey a little – "

And it's Michelangelo's turn to crack up, so hard he tips over onto his side and rolls around on the musty cushions.

"Oh man, that's gold," he wheezes as she watches him, snickering a little. "'Cause we all used to wonder a little. I dare you to ask him!"

"No way," Angel is giggling, but definite.

"Or better yet, ask Casey! Leo did!"

"NO WAY!" This time it's a cry of disbelief and Angel cracks up too, bending double over her lap and laughing so hard tears squeeze between her eyelids and their mirth rises beyond the carriage, rebounding off the stone walls of the dark tunnels that snake out around them. After several minutes they start to calm, their laughter slowing to giggles, then breathless chuckles and Angel wipes the tears from her cheeks, her abdomen aching. Mikey sits up, then catches her eye and in the next second they're off again. Angel is laughing so hard no sound at all is coming from her except the helpless whine of her own strangled breath. She hasn't felt this good in weeks.

When finally they are calm and can look at each other without losing their shit, Mikey relights the joint and sighs as he exhales.

"Truth is, Raph's clueless, Jewel," he says. "He's such a gloomy jerk he wouldn't even realise you've been making passes at him these couple of years – " Angel starts again, perturbed to be reminded just how fucking observant Michelangelo can be. " – he's too pessimistic to even consider it was possible. You don't need someone like that. Not after everything you've been through. You need someone upbeat and cheerful and able to appreciate you properly."

"Someone like you, you mean?" she teases him, plucking the joint pertly from between his huge fingertips.

"No way!" he says emphatically, but a little too quickly. "I'd be rotten for you. I just wanna get laid."

She laughs easily, as he intended her to, but she's considering it. Mainly because she knows Mikey is dying for a girlfriend, or at the very least a girl to fool around with, and because she thinks he deserves that, deserves the chance to be with a girl at least once in his life, and because he's her best friend and she loves him and wants him to be happy. And, maybe a little, because she wants to be prepared if Raphael ever notices she exists. But she decides against it; she doesn't love him like that and she's pretty sure he'll fall in love with her the instant he cums. She doesn't want to hurt him.

So instead she cuddles up to him where he lies back on those old couch cushions and watches trails of smoke curl above them in the dim light of the lantern they brought.

"It'll happen, Mikey," she promises him and even though she knows she's probably lying, she hopes for him. Mikey's smiling at the tattered rafters of the carriage ceiling and she knows that it's more than enough to keep his faith alive, and marvels how two brothers can be so different.


	18. Chapter 18

**2008**

She wakes in a haze of comforting warmth, feeling deliciously limp and supine, as though her body is honey heated in the sun. The sheets and blankets wrapped around her are crisp and scented pleasantly and the mattress is soft as a cloud. At first she doesn't want to move, then she shifts and stretches, just a little, just because the sliding of smooth linen against her bare skin feels so lovely, because the utter molten relaxation of her limbs reaffirms her contentment.

Beside her, the sheets rustle and then a huge hand is sliding over her hip and the textured firmness of plastron is pressing against her back and she feels her mouth curve in a smile as Raphael's lips play lightly across her shoulders.

"Morning," he murmurs when he reaches her ear, tugging the lobe between his teeth and softly sucking so that sparks of pleasure shoot through her like fireworks and she moans as his fingertips trail a sweetly-tickling path over her pubis and down to where the crevice between her thighs begins, making her squirm as he traces that sensitive crack teasingly, stoking a fire in her groin that quickly heats.

She's still not fully awake and doesn't want to be, the sensation of being at once helpless to his touch and so utterly tended to intoxicating and she doesn't protest as he gently rolls her onto her back, then slides beneath the sheets, pushing her thighs apart and lowering his face between them. She climaxes quickly and deliciously, feeling as though she melts completely into the bed then abruptly, ecstatically solidifying when he enters her, the friction of his cock inside her urging her to a state of absolute delirium. She keeps her eyes shut throughout, loving this world of sensory bliss, opening her mouth wantonly to his kisses, digging her fingers hard into the muscle of his shoulders and when he comes, she can feel how he pulses within her, the imprint of his teeth in her neck firm and sure.

"So," he drawls later, his voice lazy with contentment as they lay entwined. "What else we gonna do today?"

She cracks open an eyelid towards the window, where rain beats a steady rhythm against the glass.

"No walk in the woods today," she says drowsily. "Guess we oughta just stay in bed."

His mouth slides upwards in a smirk and he tugs her closer. "Suits me just fine."

She snuggles in against him, sleepily smiles.

A few minutes later he stirs again, then remarks, "Gettin' kinda hungry though." And she laughs.

They make pancakes while the autumn rains thunder the countryside outside the farmhouse, turning the lawn to mud, trees bowing beneath the relentless deluge. She stays naked because he wants her to and they curl up on the couch beneath a blanket, a pot of coffee and whiskey to Irish it close by. They watch a series of Will Ferrell movies, because she thinks he's the funniest man alive, and even though she suspects Raphael is laughing at her more than the entertainment, at least they're laughing together.

He doesn't put his mask on and when the Irish coffees prompt her to tease him about how cuddly he looks without it, he tugs her over his lap and playfully spanks her and it's so silly and she's giggling so hard she doesn't think of Julio even once.

It's been like this all week, a thoughtless paradise that unfolds as easily as a movie. From the moment they parked the car and got out, beholding the ramshackle old farmhouse and the woods beyond bathed in the old gold of the setting sun, it was as though they had left reality and all its relentless disappointment and bitter drudgery on the other side of a sheer curtain they stepped behind. They could see it beyond, hazy and indistinct far in the distance, but they were veiled from it, left only with the tender peace of a world that seemed ridiculously bewitched. Instantly the sense of liberation they seemed to mutually share had her standing straight, had his shoulders loosening and they'd held hands as they climbed the porch steps towards the unlikeliest of heavens.

They end up fucking on the couch, because of course they do, and in the hazy bliss of the aftermath she wonders if Casey had truly considered what they'd end up doing all over his place before giving them permission to come up here and it gives her an idea, an idea that is hopelessly silly and childish but that has her in fits of giggles so that Raphael is nudging her and asking her 'what?' and when she tells him, he laughs too and that decides it.

Casey's response to the photo of the couch they send with the caption "christened" is simply _"yeah great u guys" _but for some reason it makes them laugh even harder.

"Let's see how quick we can piss him off," Raphael snickers and fires off a photo of the massive oak dining room table. Casey doesn't grace them with a reply this time so next it's a photo of the kitchen counter and its peeling marble veneer.

"_srsly? u better wipe that shit down b4 leavin."_

They've polished off nearly a full bottle of whiskey between them that afternoon and so this response has them in stitches in the kitchen and fires their motivation to dash around the house taking photos of every place they figure will be most provocative.

"_thats my fave armchair. better not b any spots on it!"_

Next it's a photo of the swing seat on the porch, a favoured nook of his and April's.

"_is this 4 real guys? can u just stop?"_

Then it's the loveseat tucked in under the window of the living room.

"_I thought mating season was in spring. quit it."_

By now their laughter is a drug and they're chasing for a fix. They hit the second floor.

"_That was my granmas dresser! sick u guys"_

The bear rug over which a sepia photo of Casey's grandfather watches gets its turn.

"_aw man granpa jones had to watch that shit? he'll be spinnin in his grave"_

Next they send a photo of a door. Just a closed door. But a door is more than enough to give them the reaction they crave:

"_STAY OUTTA MAS ROOM!1"_

Angel is clinging to Raphael's arm as tears of mirth streak down her cheeks and Raphael is shaking so hard he can barely hold his phone still enough to get the shot. Next they send a photo of the door, open just a crack.

"_I MEAN IT GUYS DO NOT BEFOWL MY MA'S ROOM" _

Raphael's next photo is taken from the doorway, angled to capture the ancient four-poster bed with its fusty hangings and handmade quilt. It's the only one they caption since the first: _"why u assumin it ain't already happened?"_

When the phone rings it's April and Angel answers because Raphael thrusts it at her, shaking his head as he bends nearly double, clearly unable to get a word out. Angel takes several deep breaths and manages to answer in a voice that sounds so normal, it sets Raphael off even harder.

"Hey April, 'sup?"

"Guys, whatever you're doing, can you cut it out?" April sounds bewildered and irritated and Angel switches quickly to speaker phone so Raphael can hear. "I gotta live with this big mook, y'know."

"Oh, we thought Casey would wanna know how much we're enjoying our vacation at his place, token of our appreciation, yannow?" Angel manages breezily. Raphael has his arms wrapped around her waist and his face buried in her shoulder, barely managing to stifle his wheezing laughter. In the brief silence that follows they can hear Casey ranting and raving in the background, unintelligible but unmistakeable references to his mother's honour echoing down the line.

"I can only imagine what you mean," April replies dryly. "And I'm glad you two are having fun. Just… clean up any mess you make, okay?"

And then Casey's voice bellows down the line, loud enough for Angel to jump and nearly lose her grip on the phone:

"AND STAY OFFA MY MA'S HEIRLOOM QUILTS!"

They break, any pretence at control shattered as they sag against each other and the landing echoes with their laughter. Angel's knees are jelly and her tummy starts to ache and if Raphael weren't there to support her she'd be a crumpled mess on the floor. They just barely hear April's sigh and the click as she hangs up and their eyes meet for an instant before it sets them off in peals of hysteria once more, just barely holding each other up, the vibration of his heaving plastron against her breasts only emphasising their perfect union in that moment.

"Gotta – fuckin' – pee – " she manages to wheeze eventually. In fact there'll be an accident if she doesn't get to the bathroom soon. She staggers off, still giggling, and when she emerges, he's waiting for her and sweeps her up into his arms and she's never seen him so purely relaxed and happy – not since that long ago Christmas when they giggled together on the couch in childish conspiracy.

He carries her to the bed in the guest room and lays her down as though she's the most precious thing he's ever been entrusted with, smooths tangled locks of purple and blue and pink hair back over her ear as he lays down beside her. His green eyes are burning so bright with feeling her heart about stops and she trembles and waits for the words that seem impossibly inevitable.

Then he sighs and his gaze clouds. "Don't wanna go back," he says and though disappointment trickles like ice water down towards her gut, she knows he's still said something important.

"Then let's stay here," she says quickly, because she doesn't want to think about the fact reality is waiting for them, looming just beyond the outskirts of their woodland haven, only two days away.

Raphael chuffs, and that familiar crease of cynicism fissures his forehead. He can never let go for too long.

"Or let's not think about it," she begs him. "Instead let's wind Leo up next."

And his face shifts into a sly smirk; she's chased the demons away – for the moment. "How to get under Leo's shell," he muses with affected contemplation. "I reckon we need more whiskey to work this one out."

They end up deciding to "announce" that Angel is pregnant and address it as though it's a mass text from Angel's phone. It's mere seconds later that Raphael's phone practically explodes in his hand and Angel can hear every word Leo says clearly even before Raphael switches it to speaker. He strings his brother along for a few minutes – "C'mon bro, what condom's gonna fit me? Y'know I've always been the biggest of the bunch – in every respect", "Yeah 'course I'm gonna take responsibility – figure I'll stick around long enough to make sure the kid ain't handicapped at least" – while Angel muffles her face in the pillows. When Raphael finally breaks, Leo goes deathly silent and quietly hangs up and somehow that's funniest of all.

"Serves 'im right for even needin' to ask those questions quite frankly," Raphael mutters when they finally calm, and she shushes him with a kiss and again his eyes burn when he looks upon her and she's quietly delirious that she can be enough, all on her own, to banish that bleakness before it can take hold.

They lie chuckling in each other's arms, their hysteria leaving them exhausted and deliciously limp and completely at peace with each other. As Angel's eyes slowly flutter closed, she wonders if this fragile happiness is made more or less real by the fact it's only possible outside the fringes of reality, in a world that seems composed of dreams and forgotten yearnings. It's a melancholy thought that dogs her sleep, sending unsettling visions scurrying through the crevices of her mind, swiftly cringing out of recollection so that she has to chase after them if she wants to remember. But in the morning – the late, late morning when the sun is so high overhead she thinks for a moment it must be only dawn, so shadowed is the room – he wakes her with nuzzling kisses and she decides she will let herself forget. Just a little while longer.


	19. Chapter 19

**2006**

She'd always had a thing for bad boys.

She knew it was pathetic, but she couldn't help it – their rebelliousness spoke to the defiance of her own fiery soul; the brooding silences and the passionate flares of temper, the dark flashing eyes and all that aggressive swagger, tattooed arms with bulging biceps, cigarettes dangling from between full lips, a chip on their shoulder and endless trouble dogging their heels and making life with them a constant, relentless, exhausting thrill.

There was always something to justify the chronic unemployment, the bar fights and drugs – Marcus had been beaten by his father. Jerome's mother had walked out and left them when he was a kid. Both Emmanuel's parents were up north.

And Julio…

Well, she understood. Her own life had been no bed of roses. Parents both dead, her grandmother scrounging to support her and her brother on welfare. The shit with the Purple Dragons. Her brother going to jail after all. Tata dying and the foster homes that followed, the indifference and the contempt and, in the last one, the wandering hands and the countdown she heard ticking away in her head to something much worse as she lay in that strange bed at night, unable to sleep for fear, eyes trained anxiously on the door, not even sixteen years old.

Life was hard when you came from the bottom. The odds were stacked. She knew it and understood what it was that made them bitter and defiant, weary and belligerent. She felt it too.

"The difference between me and all those other dumb bitches is I don't try to change them," she would say. "I take them as they are."

Took them as they were and gave it back twice as good. Her name had always been an irony – Angel she was anything but. She had a temper plenty bad of her own and damned if she'd take shit from any man. It had been her own anger at the world that had spurred her to join up with the Dragons, desperate for an outlet to vent her rage and frustration, hungry to kick apart the foundations of the system, strip it bare and take the proceeds.

And though she turned from a life of crime when Casey and the turtles had intervened, that anger had never been sated.

So when the inevitable lying, cheating and deceiving started, she didn't just put up with it. When there had been one too many week-long sessions prone on her couch doing fuck all, she didn't just take it. She spoke up, loud and clear. Marcus' favourite Nikes splashed with petrol and ignited. Jerome's stash of coke flushed. Emmanuelle's tires slashed. The apartment would shake with the screaming and the hollering and never once did she back down. She was one tough bitch and always had been.

She didn't have much, but she had her self-respect, after all.

They raged back, of course, got in her face and called her every name under the sun and then some, but she always knew a few choicer phrases and had a quicker wit. And the sheer force of her fearless rage was staggering enough that they usually quailed and if they gave her the silent treatment for a couple of days, well, what did she care. At least they knew she wasn't going to just roll over.

She'd intended to teach Julio the same lesson that first night he'd shown up six hours later than he said, never answering his phone and stinking of whiskey and pussy when he finally rolled in. She was standing by the window with his dinner on a plate in one hand, her other on her hip, scowling at him.

"I had your dinner all fixed for you," she'd said and he barely looked at her as he slouched over to the couch, collapsing onto it and using the remote to switch on the television in one fluid motion.

"Bring it here," he said distractedly, lighting a cigarette even though she'd told him repeatedly she didn't want him smoking in her place.

She dropped the plate out the window.

"It got all dried out," she said evenly. "Had to chuck it."

Finally, he'd swivelled his head to look at her, smoke trailing idly from his lip.

And in the next instant he had crossed the room and backhanded her, sending her flying back against the kitchen counter top, which struck her in the small of her back so that she bounced off and straight to the floor in a graceless heap.

Stunned, uncomprehending, she'd pushed herself up, her elbows stinging with rug burn, ears ringing and the taste of blood in her mouth, and stared dumbly up at him where he loomed over her with a dispassionate glaze to his eye.

"Make it again, puta," he said calmly, and went back to the couch.


	20. Chapter 20

**2008**

The first thing she notices when she unlocks her door and gets in is that he's already taken her trash out.

She'd come home late from another endless shift on the other side of Manhattan, feet and back killing her, her earlobes aching from her dangling earrings and her makeup feeling heavy on her face, her scalp sensitised and sore where her hair has been pulled back in a ponytail all day.

He takes one look at her and gets up from the couch to help her with her coat, takes her heavy purse (_whaddya even keep in here, an entire counter from Bloomingdale's?_) and drapes the strap over one of the racks crammed with clothes she has up against the wall, then wraps her up in a warm tight hug that she sinks gratefully into, all that muscle and bony armour feeling so safe and solid.

"I ordered Chinese," he murmurs into her ear and she smiles and is so happy to be home.

The door buzzes as he's getting them a drink and she reaches automatically for her purse.

"Ah!" he barks from the poky little kitchen, stabbing the air towards her with one huge finger. "I'm payin'."

"Let's go halves," she suggests as he presses the button to admit the delivery man into the building, but he just shakes his head and pulls a few bills out of one of the pouches on his belt.

"No," he says simply and hands her the cash before disappearing into the bathroom. If the delivery man thinks she's ordered way too much for just one person, he doesn't say anything.

"You sure you don't want some money?" she says dubiously as she unpacks the seemingly endless containers of food he's ordered and lays them on the coffee table, finding space amidst the mess of scented candles, crumpled bills and discarded jewellery. "It's not exactly like you're rakin' in the big bucks." And she knows he works hard, as hard as she does if not harder - ever since a friend he refused to name had got him hooked up with a job as a wrench jockey in a mysteriously open-minded garage, he's been steadily employed and never missed a day.

"Yeah, but I don't got rent," he points out, handing her a fork he's fetched from the kitchen. She's never learned to use chopsticks; he handles them effortlessly.

Quietly, she's grateful. She's stretched for cash at the moment and every bill has come in all at once. She'd been planning on throwing together some ramen for them.

She eats until she's ready to burst then lies back on the couch. "Food coma," she groans and Raphael chuckles, then lifts her feet into his lap and starts to rub them, his large, powerful hands searching out every aching and tender spot and soothing the pain away in a way that makes her moan obscenely and slump into the cushions like she's made of putty. She watches Raphael as he watches _Breaking Bad_, and marvels to herself that his oddly-shaped profile with the domed head and protruding snout, the way his shell curves into the couch cushions, can be at once so comforting and exciting to her, though it's not even remotely human. He lifts the foot he's working on to his lips and kisses it, even though it must stink from being in her boots all day long and she's giddy suddenly with euphoria, unable to believe he's really hers.

"I love you."

She doesn't mean to say the words, but she can't take them back now they're out.

Raphael turns his head to look at her, his expression stricken and dismayed and she comprehends the enormity of the mistake she's made. Because even though she's known all along that he doesn't love her, now it's confirmed and she realises she'll never be able to feel as happy again.

"Angel – " he starts, his voice raspy and sorrowful and her heart plummets like it's a stone he's just kicked off a cliff. Then he just stops, staring at her with huge, chagrined eyes and she can't stomach the pity in them.

Abruptly she's standing, gritting her teeth so her chin doesn't wobble, jamming her feet into a pair of nearby ballet flats, fumbling for her keys.

"Baby – "

"Forget it," she snaps, jamming her arms into her coat. "Goin' for a walk."

"I'll go," he stands up, still gazing at her all remorseful and compassionate and she wants to hurl her keys at him. "It's your place."

"No, I gotta get out of here," she says shortly, the prickling of tears starting behind her eyes. "Do what you want."

She's just yanked open the front door when he calls her name again.

"Angel."

She can't help but look back at him, can't help but hope he's about to say something that'll make it all better. Her heart tugs when she looks at his rugged muscular form, the green skin and textured plates of his shell that seem somehow so normal to her now, the eyes that burn with intelligence and feeling. He looks at her hopelessly, is utterly still.

"I never even said it to her," is all that he says.

It's the first time he's acknowledged she even existed since the night they hooked up. Angel stares at him and feels her soul quietly fold.

"Yeah, but you felt it," she replies, and leaves.

It's too cold to be out, but she has to keep walking, arms crossed tight over her, head down against the bitter breeze so what few people still wander the streets can't see the tears that track her cheeks. She walks aimlessly for she doesn't know how long, wishing the night would freeze her heart in her chest and leave her numb. When she thinks about returning to an empty apartment, she's texted Raphael before she can stop herself: "_pls dont leave. dont want 2 b alone."_

She doesn't expect him to answer because he hates texting, but her phone vibrates a moment later and she tingles with relief to read his reply: "_ok"_

And she knows he's replied because he's worried about her, and he cares.

So she goes back home and he's waiting for her and embraces her when she goes to him, holding her tight and close. She's surprised to find him icy to the touch.

He shrugs when she looks at him, confused. "You really think I'd let you go walkin' round this neighbourhood alone at this time of night?" he remarks lightly, but his gaze is serious and he doesn't let her go.

It's something that would piss April off, Angel knows, but it makes her feel cared for and right then she badly needs it.

They make their way to the bed and he gets her off several times before he lets himself finish and she wonders if he really thinks it'll compensate for the love he can't give her and decides he probably knows it doesn't. Decides she doesn't even care so long as he stays.

"You're special," he murmurs into her hair as she drifts off to sleep. It's enough. It has to be.


	21. Chapter 21

**2006**

Well, where was she supposed to go? It was her place. If she tried to kick him out, he'd probably hit her again. Worse.

And by then, she loved him.

She didn't deceive herself. Even later, when he crawled into bed beside her, kissing her and whispering his apologies, she knew it wasn't going to be the only time. She even knew it was only going to get worse.

But it didn't seem to matter.

He'd been dazzling when first they met. Handsome, charming and well-dressed in tight fitting tee-shirts and jeans that showed off his impressive physique, he had a shining mane of dark hair and his Afro-Dominican features were chiselled perfection. She wasn't even sure where he came from, except all of a sudden he was always around those few human friends she had and all the guys wanted to be him and all the girls just wanted him – except for her. Yeah, he just thought he was a little too hot stuff for her. He had an indolent and arrogant manner to him that rubbed her right up the wrong way. Funny how a slick smooth talker who moved weight for men who never got their own hands dirty seemed all guff and bluster when you knew a group of elite trained ninja.

Then one night when she was out working, he passed her by, his green eyes locking with hers and sending an icicle of pure fear trickling through her gut. There was only one reason she'd be loitering on that block at that time of night. She knew it, he knew it and, she figured, now everyone else would know it too.

But days passed and no one treated her any differently. No one asked her any strange questions. No one shot her any dirty looks. Though her heart stopped with every vibration of her phone, though she jumped every time her name was called as she walked through the neighbourhood, the worst simply never happened. He hadn't told anyone.

Still, when he slid into the seat opposite her at the crowded local diner one morning when she was having breakfast, she didn't do more than raise an eyebrow at him and return her attention back to her magazine.

"So why ain't your man takin' better care of you?" he didn't bother with any preamble and she snorted, flicked her hair back. From the kitchen, the sounds of plates clattering and the ding of the bell indicated orders were up.

"Who says I need a man to take care of me?" she retorted brashly and took a sip of her coffee, giving him a quick peek over the rim of the cup through thickly lashed eyes.

A grin spread over his handsome face and she felt a little twitch in her heart despite herself.

"Well, I do, baby," he said, all sparkling teeth and flashing eyes, leaning cockily back against the booth, the bustle around him seeming to dim by the radiance of that smile. "A woman like you should have a man to give her just anythin' she could ask for."

She replaced the cup in its saucer with a clink, folded her ringed hands over each other on the table and gave him a bored look. "Who're you I should give a damn, anyway?"

His grin just spread wider and she tried not to look into his eyes. They were a startling green, reminding her too much of Raphael. And Raphael had Amber now.

"Come have dinner with me tonight," he said.

Angel rolled her eyes, looked out across the diner. "No thanks. I can buy my own burger 'n fries," she drawled, but the smile never left his face.

"That's why I figured we'd go Dirty French."

She can't help it. Her eyes slid back to his. But she doesn't lose her cool.

"Like they'd give you a table," she retorts and he reaches across the table and takes her hand in his and a jolt sparks right through her.

"Come out with me and you'll find out," he says calmly, his thumb stroking across the back of her hand. It feels nice and it's been a long time since she was with anyone and sure as shit no man has ever taken her out anywhere fancy, or even classy, before. And she just can't get that encounter with Amber out of her mind, the cold blue eyes in the vicious little face or how that smile transformed her into something she abruptly, dismally comprehended how Raphael could love.

"There better be cocktails included," she replied, as though there was nothing at all special about Dirty French, like she wasn't already trying to decide between Versace and Moschino.

"Naturally, baby," he said easily, still cradling her hand in his and holding her gaze and the deep green depths of his eyes started her heart thudding hard.

He didn't even try to fuck her that first night, though by the end of it she was liquored up and buttered up enough to have said yes the second he asked. And for a while, it was like living in a fairy tale. When she finally recalled most fairytales got ugly, she was already hooked and his hold on her was like a spell.

By the time she finally hated him, despised him with a venomous and savage fury that scared her sometimes with its ferocity, she was a trembling husk of her former self, cowed and terrified, all the hatred she felt like a tumour on her heart, growing harder and more suffocating every day.

The day he was arrested, she wept in relief and joy.

She ignored the call asking her to post his bail and the next she heard, he'd been sentenced to five years.


	22. Chapter 22

**2008**

April smiles affectionately at Raphael, who stares up at her with his mouth in an unsmiling line, then lifts a hand to his face, her knuckles gently scraping his cheek. Then she envelopes him in a hug and though he does little more than place his hands lightly on her back, Angel can see how his eyes press shut for just an instant, enough to give away far more than if he had relaxed wholeheartedly into her embrace the way Mikey does. She smiles wryly and takes a large swig of her eggnog. Mustn't let the tough guy front slip even a little. Can't be seen as _weak_.

When April releases him, Raphael lightly punches Casey's arm, who returns in kind, and the new arrivals begin to peel off jackets and scarves, caps and gloves, all slightly sodden and beginning to steam in the warmth of the lair as Angel watches them from across the massive chamber.

"Merry Christmas, guys!" April calls out as she strips off her final layer, revealing a light sweater and ski pants, looking like a supermodel in clothes that Angel would feel merely frumpy in. She hasn't even bothered to change out of her pajamas yet, a cosy flannel pair in pink with fluffy blue clouds all over them, her hair in a messy, loose ponytail.

Beside her, Mikey holds aloft the turkey baster in one hand, wooden spoon in the other, cookie dough dripping onto the bench. "MERRY CHRISTMAS, ONE AND ALL!" he carols joyously and Angel snorts and waves as April beams to see them in the kitchen, slaving happily away at the feast.

"I brought my sweet potato pie," April lifts a foil-covered pie dish from the pile of presents that Casey and Raphael are beginning to move beneath the tree, starts walking towards them as they both cheer. That pie could be a show winner.

"Oh," she says abruptly and turns back to where her coat is hanging on a peg on the exposed brick wall, fishing around in one of the pockets until she retrieves a small box, wrapped in white. "Here," she says quietly to Raphael as he returns to gather the last of the gifts.

"Thanks," Raphael mutters in reply, shooting Angel a surreptitious glance as he takes the box, and she feels her cheeks flush. She knows the box is for her, but she doesn't know how she feels about it. They've barely spoken all day. She drains the last of her eggnog as her heart knots up, then turns towards the fridge for a refill. As she bends over to get the jug from the lower shelf where it's ended up crammed behind whatever Mikey has been taking out and putting back in, Mikey swats her lightly on the ass.

"Hey!" It's Raphael barking, and as Angel straightens and turns around, she sees him standing just outside the kitchen, furious glower contorting his features as he stares murderously at Mikey over the counter. "Show some fuckin' respect."

"Chill bro," Mikey holds his hands up in supplication, though his voice is edged with a little annoyance. He's noticed the sour mood between them. "We always fool around like this."

Raphael's snarl grows and Angel sighs and moves to refill her glass. He's itching for a fight and it seems deliberately reading innuendo into Mikey's word choice is as convenient an excuse as any.

"Keep your fuckin' hands off my girl, Mike," Raphael snaps as Angel fetches the bottle of rum to spike her drink a leeeeetle more. "I ain't gonna stand for that shit."

Mikey rolls his eyes and stands his ground, ridiculous as he looks in his apron and oven mitts. "You don't _own_ her, Raph. And maybe if you were paying more attention to her today she wouldn't even be over here with me."

Raphael's eyes bulge and Angel adds another dollop of rum to her drink.

"My relationship ain't none of your business, Mike," his voice is beginning to rise, his arms and neck so tense she can see the veins swell like lightning, can see his green flesh darken. "Shut your fat mouth or I'll shut it for you."

"Hey!" April is suddenly there, stepping between the two brothers, one long slim hand on Raphael's shoulder and though he tenses, he doesn't jerk away. "Cut it out, guys. It's Christmas." Her lovely forehead is puckered in a frown; April has a fine temper of her own and when she's really pissed, nothing terrifies those four elite ninja more. "Apart from anything else, you're talking about Angel like she's not even here."

Blue and green eyes swivel to stare at her where she's cowered against the fridge with her heavily-spiked drink in hand. She titters hysterically and abruptly walks away. Like it matters. Like it's ever mattered.

She goes to Raphael's room cos she doesn't know where else she can have some privacy and she guesses April will keep him away for a while. She sits on the bed he got after they started seeing each other to replace the hammock he favoured and stares unseeing into the jumble of her rainbow Louis Vuitton overnight case, an extravagance from her hooking days, wondering what she'll wear for dinner. As if that matters either. Raphael's room is so sparsely decorated that even the few things she's strewn about her case – she just doesn't seem capable of tidiness – make it look like a bomb has hit. He hadn't even ribbed her about how much she'd packed for two nights when she'd got there yesterday, but he had wanted sex.

She'd knocked him back. Maybe that's why he's been so pissy all day. Maybe it's all her fault. And she smiles bitterly to herself and takes a hefty swallow of her drink, which is far too strong now to be anything other than foul, but the liquor burns in her belly and her head swims a little more, so she doesn't care.

Last year, Raphael was nearly as big a sentimental goofball as he had been that first Christmas she'd spent with them. Not even Amber's spectre could loom large enough to cast a shadow over his humour and he'd been engaged and solicitous all day and it had felt to her like a promise of what the future could hold. This year he has been barely present, spending most of his time in front of the television, drinking and sourly spurning whatever invitations the others cast his way.

Fuck it, she'll stay in her pajamas. No makeup, no dressing up. Half the family is naked anyway. It doesn't matter.

There's a soft but unhesitant knock on the door. She guesses either Leo, Splinter or April. "Yeah?" she calls.

It's Leo.

"Hey Angel," he says gently from the doorway, his lean, muscular form strong but unassuming. "You okay?"

She shrugs diffidently. "Yeah, I'm fine."

He appraises her calmly, his blue eyes so deep they're nearly violet, his expression carefully neutral. "We're going to watch a movie. Come and join us?"

She marvels how he is able to infuse his voice with both the genuine desire for her company yet the nonchalance that permits her to answer as she pleases. It's not something Raphael would be capable of. Then she remembers how, the day after their prank texting, as they sat cuddled up on the brocade couch with the sagging springs watching more silly movies, Raphael's phone had vibrated. He'd glanced at it, then said "huh" in a quietly surprised sort of way.

"'Sup?" she asked, shifting further down so her cheek pressed flush against his plastron. Wordlessly, he had held the phone in front of her.

On the screen, a text message from Leonardo was displayed: "_Sorry for the way I spoke to you yesterday. Reacted out of shock. Not okay. I know you would do the right thing. I hope you know I would support you."_

"Wow," Angel had said, impressed. "Cool."

Raphael had started texting a reply with laborious care and she had watched as his brow puckered with concentration, had studied his eyes which, while he was otherwise preoccupied, were unguarded and complex with feeling. He wasn't big on texting and hadn't mastered the tiny keyboards the way Donnie and Mikey had and it had taken him several minutes to finish. He had hesitated a moment, then thrust the screen towards Angel's face. "Okay?" he had queried curtly, and she had fumbled an arm out from under the chequered blanket to take the phone, wriggling into an upright position.

"_Thanks. Sorry 4 joke. Bad taste. I know. Same bro."_

Angel had glanced at him and wanted to kiss away the defensive set to his mouth. This was way more touchy-feely than he was used to being with his brothers and she could tell beneath his plastron he was a churning mess of emotion. "Yeah," she had replied, handing the phone toward him. "Just right."

Raphael had hit send, then placed the phone back on the armrest next to him, tugging Angel back down under his arm. As she had felt the tension slowly leave his body, she playfully added: "A coupla kisses woulda been a nice touch though."

Raphael had snorted loudly, rolled his eyes and lightly swatted her butt and she had grinned. But it had occurred to her, as their attention quietly returned to the movie, that they were all growing up.

But Northampton seems like an impossible dream, long faded into the past.

She decides she doesn't want to spend any more of Christmas in a room by herself and gets shakily to her feet. She stumbles a little as she walks towards the doorway and Leo is there in a flash to take her gently by the elbow.

"Thanks," she says, a little slurrily and helpless about it, continuing drolly: "Don't wanna spill my drink."

Leo smiles indulgently. "We can always get you another." Of course he's not drunk at all.

The turkey is in the oven and Mikey is taking a break, saving a spot for her beside him on the couch in the darkened den with his customary relentless optimism. Raphael and April are nowhere to be seen, but Casey is saving a spot next to him as well. A long ago conversation with Mikey suddenly springs into recollection and she elbows him and whispers cheekily into his ear: "Think he's warmin' that spot for April or Raph?"

And Mikey snorts eggnog through his nostrils and Angel laughs merrily as her rum-addled brain swirls and tips.

April and Raphael return then, April folding herself gracefully onto the couch besides Casey, tucking her legs up under her, Raphael slumping down into the beanbags without looking at Angel. But Angel doesn't look at him either, just sips her eggnog and plops her feet into Mikey's lap.

Master Splinter is comfortably ensconced in his armchair, clawed feet on the pouf in front of him, cup of warm sake to hand, the crocheted rug April made for him tucked around his legs. He is gazing at them all with a somewhat wistful affection as he patiently waits for everyone to get settled and as Leonardo sits down beside April with his own cup of sake (_go wild, Leo!_), Splinter sighs and gently strokes the grey whiskers that frame his muzzle.

"It is not the same without Donatello," he comments, and the sudden stillness amongst them reveals it's what they've all been thinking.

"We should be happy for him," April says firmly. "It's the opportunity of a lifetime, travelling with the utroms. Think of the work he's getting to do."

Splinter accedes with an incline of his head, but his black eyes are unusually bright in the dim glow of the Christmas tree lights. For that matter, so are April's.

Leonardo raises his cup. "Merry Christmas, Donatello." They all follow suit, then Splinter hits 'play'.

The movie is _It's A Wonderful Life _and Angel's eyes well suddenly with tears as she recalls the first Christmas she spent with the turtles all those years ago, smashed on one glass of champagne, holding hands with a mutant turtle in the dark. Abruptly she gets up and moves onto the beanbags besides Raphael and he puts an arm around her and holds her tight against him, kisses her cheek fiercely even though everyone is there and will be able to see, if only by the glow of the television screen. But she guesses that, like her, he knows she's not the only one crying in the dark right then.

Later, after a typically incredible feast courtesy of Mikey's culinary prowess, when they're all stuffed and groaning and Casey's unbuttoned his jeans and Mikey is crying about how he wishes he could loosen his plastron and Angel is thanking the heavens for the elastic waistband of her pajama bottoms, they gather around the tree to open presents, a free-for-all process punctuated by the ripping of paper, the shouts or murmurs of pleasure, the fizz of champagne as April refills hers and Angel's glasses and the pop and hiss of Casey and Raphael's beers.

Raphael presses the small white box she saw earlier into her hand and presses a hot, swift kiss against her ear. "Here," he says quietly. "Merry Christmas."

She dares a quick kiss against his mouth since the others are all occupied. Raphael hates to be the centre of attention, especially when he anticipates embarrassment, and the only thing more embarrassing than public displays of affection is being emotionally vulnerable so she quietly unwraps the box and keeps its contents in her lap even as her eyes widen at the sight of the distinctive blue that is revealed beneath the glossy white paper.

Raphael watches her carefully as she presses the catch so the lid opens, and the silver key glitters against the white velvet, its blue enamel heart seeming to wink at her in the soft flash and sparkle of the tree lights.

"Oh, Raph…"

It's Tiffany. He knows she loves that stupid movie, that even though she prefers gold she's got the tag ring, earrings and bracelet but that she can't justify spending that kind of money anymore, and that makes her think about what he must've spent on it – it's hardly the top of their line, but they're hardly rolling in dough. She thinks back to last Christmas, when Raphael spent the day light-hearted and enthusiastic rather than sulking and confrontational, when this gift would've sent her into floods of delighted tears, made her heart swell fit to burst, made her giddy and delirious on love. Now she looks at it and sees it for the over-compensation that it is and it hurts so bad she's placed a hand over her heart and clutched before she even knows she's done it.

"Thank you," she says softly, and her eyes are burning with tears that are anything but delighted. "It's beautiful."

He's still watching her as she traces one finger over the blue heart and she suspects that he knows something isn't quite right though she can't look at him. She wishes he would touch her but knows he won't. In front of others he is usually contained and withheld, making her crave his reassurance all the more so that she jumps on him once they're alone, seeking attention in a way she knows he won't refuse. It's an impulse so ingrained she cannot help it, even then.

"Hoped you'd like it," he says quietly.

"It's beautiful," she repeats, and her heart thuds hard and sorrowful against her ribcage. She wonders if she should ask him to help her put it on but knows he won't like that; that it would draw everyone's eye and he wouldn't want to be watched fastening jewellery around her neck. Besides, the catch might be too small for his enormous fingers, ninja or not. She wonders if she should put it on herself and decides she will, but before she can make a move, Mikey is leaping across the cosy arrangement of couches and cushions to land in front of her where they sit cross-legged by the tree, thrusting a brilliantly wrapped, very thin rectangular parcel into her hands.

"For you from me," he chirps, baby blue eyes shining, a smile on his face so bright she about squints. Then he shoots Raphael a sly little look. "Am I allowed to kiss her?" His tone is all mischief and exaggerated innocence, but there's an edge to it and Angel knows it's the booze talking.

Raphael narrows his eyes, all too ready to rise to the bait. "I don't _own_ her," he replies dangerously, but Angel feels an impulse to ally with him, prompted by the lavish gift and the painful wish that it can somehow all be alright.

"Only my man gets to kiss me tonight," she plays it lightly, tossing her hair back and snuggling close to Raphael, knowing he won't mind right then when it's all about showing who's boss. Sure enough, his mouth tugs in a little smirk and his arm settles possessively around her waist.

Mikey snorts, seems blasé. "Whatever. Open it!"

She obligingly rips open the gaudy Santa Claus wrapping and finds within a comic book, carefully assembled on plain paper, hand drawn, inked and coloured. Wonderingly, she begins to flick through it, her breath catching as she sees it's the story of her friendship with Mikey, both of them rendered in stylised cartoons and prisma colours, from that first day they went exploring old train yards right up to the night of the _Die Hard_ marathon, when Julio was finally gone. It must've taken him weeks. That final page she catches sight of a caption, in careful lettering "_… and even though so much time had passed, it was like no time had passed at all." _And she bursts into tears and throws herself onto Mikey, hugging him tight and sobbing into his neck and knowing he won't care if every eye in the room is staring at them right then. Wordlessly, he hugs her back, his arms almost as strong as Raphael's, then easily releases her as soon as she pulls away, wiping her face futilely as tears flow freely down her cheeks. Mikey gives her an affectionate little grin, chucks her under the chin and darts off to admire the antique _Go_ set April and Splinter gave Leonardo, clearly having waited to give Angel her present last.

The Tiffany box was knocked from her lap when she launched herself at Mikey, and abashed, she hastily picks it up and checks to make sure the key is undamaged. She doesn't look at Raphael as she carefully unhooks the chain and fastens it around her neck, but her cheeks burn beneath the still-streaming tears, and she knows that whether he loves her or not, it would've hurt to see.

She settles back beside him and pushes her hand into his, kisses his cheek despite the crowd around them, knows she is over-compensating as much as he has. There is jealousy burning furiously in his eyes, but he doesn't say anything, just squeezes her hand back and she thinks he might even be a little glad because for once, he isn't the bad guy.


	23. Chapter 23

**2006**

"_Mind-bottling, isn't it?"_

"_Did you just say mind-bottling?"_

"_Yeah, mind-bottling. You know, when things are so crazy it gets your thoughts all trapped, like in a bottle?"_

She's belly-laughing up against Mikey in the den and she can feel the shake of his body as he laughs right along to _Blades of Glory_, Angel's favourite since she first saw it one night when she was delaying going home to Julio. She's seen it a dozen times or more, but somehow it never gets old and getting to watch it finally with Mikey makes it like the first time.

"Pause it," Mikey wheezes, bits of chips spraying from his mouth. "I gotta get another soda. You want another of those cherry cruisers?"

"Shit yeah," she swigs the last of the bottle she's holding, wipes her mouth off with the back of her hand. "Bring two."

Mikey snorts as he stands up. "Wild girl. Like there's enough sauce in five of those things to get a fly drunk."

In response, Angel loudly burps and gives Mikey a shit-eating grin. She's already had five and is feeling plenty light-headed. Mikey applauds her as he heads off towards the kitchen.

She's fiddling on her phone when the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She swivels her head around to peer around the lair that surrounds her, but all is silent and still as before. She turns back to the television set, the beanbag rustling around her as its stuffing slides about, wondering. When Mikey returns, his brow is creased with worry.

"Sup?" she queries as he wordlessly hands her the drinks, then sinks into the beanbag beside her.

Mikey sighs, shrugs. "Just saw Raph in the kitchen," he replies gloomily and Angel blinks and her hand slips on the bottle cap so the edges bite into her palm.

It's not as though she's forgotten Raphael exists, but it's been easy not to think about him. Julio occupied all of her time and energy for a while and now he's gone she's been busy getting to know herself again. For the first few weeks after the arrest, she jumped at every step in the hallway outside her apartment, at every scratch at the window, at every shout of a male voice on the street, sure it was him, somehow free and coming for her. She woke night after night, sweating and heart hammering, flinching from the fist she knew was coming, convinced he was in the apartment only to find it dark and empty but for her, just as it was before. But as time passed and she grew steadily accustomed to the fact that he was gone, really gone, she slowly began to relax. Coming and going as she liked, leaving the dishes until she felt like doing them, stretching out across the whole of her bed might've sounded like petty luxuries, but not having to fear a vicious word or a hard fist on the other side of them made them rare and delirious. Never had she so revelled in solitude before and without having to constantly occupy her mind navigating the precarious and treacherous maze that was Keeping Julio Happy, she was unsure what to do with herself, and suddenly too exhausted to do much of anything except dump his shit in the trash, sit on her couch and enjoy feeling like it was her place again, all hers. She was still too tentative to be happy, but at least she wasn't scared all the damn time.

"I didn't know he was here," she says dumbly, not sure what else to say, taking a sip of her drink.

Mikey pops the top on his soda, chugs, belches. "He's not, not really," he says, and his blue eyes are clouded. "He's really fucked up."

It hits her then just how out of touch she is, with Mikey, with the Hamato family, with the world. For the longest time she has been mindlessly orbiting Julio, so consumed with the endless task of avoiding his wrath – a task she always failed at, inevitably – that she'd forgotten the countless lives that unfolded ceaselessly around her.

"What's wrong?" she asks Mikey, who is chugging again, then looks at her strangely, as though he only just realises she doesn't know.

"He and that girl broke up," he says quietly, shifting on the beanbag to cautiously survey the lair, assuring himself Raphael is not in earshot. "It's made a total mess of him. It's been a year or something and he's just – he just can't let go. I'm really worried."

Angel stares at him, looks at the image frozen on the television screen, Will Ferrell and Jon Heder's faces frozen in twin expressions of comical disgust, and it strikes her how incredible it is that the relationship between a giant freak turtle and a junkie hooker could've unfolded in its entirety and finished whilst she had no idea at all.

"Oh," she says lamely. "Sorry, I didn't know."

Mikey's eyes lock on hers and awareness gleams in them, and he's jostling her shoulder gently, an easy smile tugging the corners of his mouth. "Hey, you've had plenty of your own shit to worry about. You didn't need to know." It's not just that - it's been months since she's even spoken to Mikey, but he's sweet enough not to mention it. His smile grows playful. "But believe me, between worrying about you and worrying about Raph, I'm starting to understand why Leo has such a stick crammed up his tail all the damn time. I am _not_ cut out for this mommy-schtick."

She can laugh because she knows he wants her to, knows that he doesn't mind at all. "But you look so good in that little flowery apron of yours," she ribs him right back. He interlocks his fingers beneath his chin and flutters his eyes at her.

"Geraniums bring out the colour points in my eyes," he chirps, and she snorts cherry vodka out her nose, sending him off in kind. After a week where she luxuriated in the impossibly simple pleasure of being alone without counting down the seconds, an ever twisting knot in her gut and a tremor in her heart, to when Julio would return and shatter the fragile peace, she had remembered Mikey, and with no small twinge of guilt. But he had answered his phone right away, just asking her worriedly if she was okay. He'd been at her side within the hour, complete with a bottle of tequila and all the fixings for quesadillas, and they'd ate and drank themselves into a stupor whilst watching all the _Die Hard_ movies and he hadn't pried, hadn't pushed, hadn't done anything except be Mikey, and that was everything she needed. He'd stayed the night and she felt safe. In the morning, before the sun could rise, she walked him to her window as he cracked wise about being able to convincingly claim he'd finally done the walk of shame before he paused, looked at her and then crushed her against him in a hug that took her breath away, stirred the traitorous beginnings of panic before she remembered it was Mikey, and she would never be safer than right then. "It's good to have you back, Jewel," he whispered into her hair, and she'd shaken with the effort of suppressing the first tears to rise since Julio's arrest.

Mikey's looking at her suddenly serious and thoughtful and she quirks an eyebrow at him as she takes a swig of her drink, then glances at the television screen in an obvious hint. Mikey picks up the remote control, aims it, then glances at her again.

"You'd be really good for Raph," he says suddenly, and this time she chokes on her drink, chest heaving painfully as she coughs and stares in consternation at her friend.

"Still got a thing for him, huh?" The corner of his mouth is twitching in a smile both fond and wry, his wrists resting slack on his knees as he leans back into the beanbag.

"I don't know," Angel says honestly, because it's something she hasn't even thought about for longer than she can remember.

But then she thinks about Raphael – the way his green eyes glitter with sardonic humour and cynicism and how his cocky smirk always upended her gut, made her feel senseless and stupid with admiration. She recalls his shoulders, rigid peaks of muscle sweeping down into the powerful arms, skin so snug veins flash beneath it with every gesture. She envisions the way he walks, heavy and deliberate, belying the incredible grace and dexterity he is capable of in an instant, but appealing in its weight, ever underscored with the touch of a swagger, and how his brow furrows so deeply when he is most striving to conceal whatever he's got going on inside. Then she remembers the way he held her hand on the couch, in the dark, that long ago Christmas. Colour rises in her cheeks.

Mikey notices and his smile grows wider, but she's unsettled and ill-at-ease, her heart fluttering strangely in her chest. She snatches the remote from Mikey's hand, hits 'play'.

"Enough gabbin'," she says. "Or we'll lose track of the plot."

Mikey laughs at such a ludicrous notion, slings an arm around her shoulders and she leans comfortably against him, drink in hand, as Stranz and Fairchild Van Waldenberg commence their devious scheming to the soundtrack of their titters. But Angel does not miss the gleam in Mikey's eye or the smug tilt to his grin and she knows he is doing some scheming of his own; that he thinks he's figured out a way to fix it so he doesn't have to worry about either of them anymore, figured out a way to fix them both at once, and she wonders why his decision that she'd be good for Raphael seems to mean he has forgotten he thinks Raphael wouldn't be any good for her.


	24. Chapter 24

**2009**

She isn't sure what gives him away. If it's the set of his shoulders - squared and heavy - or the look in his eyes as her gaze meets his – resolute and sorrowful – or some other intangible quality altogether, or the whole mess of them combined. But she takes one look at him, and she knows.

His tread is heavy as he steps into her apartment from the window, his expression grave. She turns from the sink, where she is drying dishes in her tiny, shabby kitchenette, her hands going still and her heart arrested in her chest, and watches him as he approaches. When he reaches the scuffed dingy-white counter, he places both hands upon it and looks at her and she can see the reluctance in his eyes, and the resolve.

"Hey," he says quietly. She puts the dish she was drying down on the counter and looks at him, says nothing. She doesn't want to delay it. Doesn't want to let him delay it.

Raphael sighs silently, the fall of his shoulders the only giveaway. But his eyes – those fathomless, brilliantly green eyes - grow darker with understanding.

"I got the chance to travel," he says directly, if gently. "I'm gonna take it."

And at once her stalled heart gives a heave and plummets.

"Just like that, huh?" she says quietly, but steady. There's a prickle behind her eyes but she just reaches for another dish from the draining rack and begins to dry it, staring unseeing at the ugly brown tiles that line the wall above the sink, at the crack that runs jagged through several of them.

"No, not just like that," he replies, and she can tell she has upset him. _Good._ "It's taken – I hadda think about it a good long while."

"Can't think why," she says shortly, placing that dish with a sharp clack onto the other, getting one more. "Seems the obvious decision."

Raphael presses his eyes shut, takes a deep breath.

"You know that ain't true," he says lowly to hide, she thinks, his frustration. "For a lotta reasons. And yeah, one of 'em is you."

"Figured I'd be the best reason to go," she says curtly, turns away to hide the sudden contortion of her face, dried dishes in her hands, the kitchen so small the cupboard with its chipped blue paint is right there.

"C'mon, Angel," Raphael blurts, exasperation and dismay underscoring his rough voice. "Don't do this."

She drops the dishes into the cupboard with a clatter and slams the door shut, whirling back towards him. "Don't do what, Raphael?" she snaps. "Don't be a cunt when you're dumpin' me?"

He inhales deeply, his plastron rising, and she sees her point has hit its mark. If there's one thing Raphael can understand better than almost anyone else, it's lashing out in defence.

"Okay," he says, meeting her eye, his expression composed and intent.

For a moment, there is silence, and it gives her a chance to calm, drawing in great, silent breaths that help cool the fire behind her eyes, help her keep it together. She turns towards the draining rack and begins to dry the cutlery, slow and carefully, setting her jaw hard.

After a moment, he takes a deep breath and speaks again. "But you're kinda right. It ain't the only reason but – I think if I don't go – I won't ever end this. And I wanna do right by you."

Angel yanks open a drawer which jams and staggers on its bent rails, dumps the rattling cutlery in. "Why is dumpin' me doin' right by me?" Her voice is low and bitter, a sob threatening to break through it, her heart a sallow lump in her gut. Raphael doesn't answer. She places her hands on the sink and sucks in a shuddering breath. "Just say it," she spits, her quietly shaking voice seething.

"I don't love you," he says finally, the brutality of his words belied by the gentleness of his raspy voice. Even though she was prepared to hear it, the words still rip through her so that she presses her eyes shut against the pain. But when she feels the sting of moisture there, she quickly opens them again, opens them wide so they dry quick.

He speaks again: "And you deserve to be loved."

"So you're really doin' this for me, huh?" She is spitefully pleased by the sarcasm in her voice, as she plucks her coffee mug from the rack and attacks it with the wet dishrag, not looking at him, not even facing him. "How sweet. I'm so fuckin' touched."

He grows frustrated again, edgily shifts his weight.

"No, I ain't gonna pretend to be all noble about this," he says with sharp emphasis. "I've stayed cos I'm a selfish sonuvabitch and I know leavin's in my own best interest as well. But it's in yours too." His voice softens in entreaty, touched with an edge of tenderness that makes her recoil for all the ways it threatens to break her. "I'm only holdin' you back. You're fuckin' amazing – "

"Oh, save it," she snaps, practically choking on the words. There's a suffocating pressure in her chest that wells upwards, tightening her throat. She's never had this conversation before but she knows how it goes – he'll tell her all about how wonderful she is, how she's got so much to offer, how he doesn't deserve her, how she should find someone better than he is and none of it will make her feel any better in the least because despite what a rare and beautiful snowflake she is, he could never love her. Because he's leaving her.

"No, I want you to understand," he comes around the counter into the tiny kitchen alcove as she spins around to find something else to do, something else to occupy her shaking hands. But there's nothing within reach. She backs up against the sink, head lowered, her teeth gritted and her brow heavy. He doesn't reach out to touch her, doesn't even come up close, because this is something else he understands – how fucked up it would be to get in her space when she can barely restrain the nightmarish deluge of emotion she's feeling. But he speaks firmly and with raw sincerity: "You are one in a million. You are a fuckin' _gift_. I'm too fucked up to appreciate it. I wish I coulda."

He means it, the fucking bastard. He really fucking means it.

"It's not me, it's you, I get it," she says flatly, arms crossed over her waist, fingernails digging hard into her palms, hard enough to keep her sharp, to scatter the prickle that keeps threatening to erupt behind her eyes.

"Fuck, Angel," he exclaims, letting one clenched fist knock back against the wall behind him. "Willya please just fuckin' listen to me? Ya got every right to be pissed. If I had been watchin' this shit happen to you, I woulda kicked the shit outta me a dozen times over by now."

Always his old chivalrous stand by. A bitter little smile twists her lips.

"Then why's it taken you this long? You care _so_ much?" she throws at him, lifting her head to shoot him a quick glance filled with venom, long enough to see his expression is stricken, and her guts twist with resentment for all his fucking compassion.

"Cos – cos I could see," he begins heavily, his voice raw with feeling. " – how it coulda been. Y'know, I wish to fuck this had all happened some other time – cos I think I coulda really – "

"Shut the fuck up," she breaks in through gritted teeth and a choking throat, arms tightly folded across her chest now, head bowed so that she's glaring at her toes on the stained old linoleum. She doesn't wanna hear how he _could've_ loved her if only he hadn't been so _heartbroken_ over another woman.

He falls silent at least, though she can feel his eyes on her.

She takes in several great, shuddering breaths, waits a moment until she's sure she can speak without her voice cracking.

"All this time," she started quietly. "I been so scared of losin' you, I never just called you out on it. Even though I knew." Finally, she lifts her head, meets his eyes with her own even though it hurts like hell. "You still love her."

He stares straight back at her, unflinching.

"Yeah" he concedes, the barest nod of his head. "I still love her."

She can't hold his gaze anymore, not without breaking, so she looks away again, this time to the oven door, where her eyes begin to mindlessly trace lines, connecting the spatters of grease on the other side of the glass. Raphael leans wearily up against the wall, folds his arms; she catches the movement in her peripheral, and feels a pang in her chest as she recalls every easy, fluid movement of his limbs, the flex and shift of muscle beneath green flesh, the intensity of his gaze. All of it on the cusp of walking out.

"I thought maybe you could save me," he admits hoarsely.

She hears herself sniff, bitterly, humourlessly. "I thought maybe I could too." And she realises all at once how ridiculous a notion it was. One more humiliation to try and forget.

"Wasn't right to put that on you."

"Oh stop it!" her head whips back to him, teeth bared, chest heaving. "Just fuckin' stop it."

Angel sees then from the glint in his eyes that he wants her to get mad at him, wants her to throw everything she's got at him and then some; that he thinks he deserves it. Abruptly it calms her, determined to do nothing that will make him feel better, not when she has to feel like _this_. Not when she's gonna feel like this for a long, long time. She leans back up against the sink, inhales shakily and sets her jaw.

After a moment, Raphael moves again, she thinks he's running the palm of his hand back over his skull. "If I ever wanna move on, I gotta get outta here," he says quietly. Then he takes a step toward her. "Maybe – when I get back – " he sounds unsure, mostly, but there is a tinge of hope there.

"No, Raphael," she interrupts him coldly, that little note of appeal unexpectedly hardening her. She wants to hurt him anyway she can. She raises her eyes to his, glares at him fiercely, defiantly. "Not ever."

Those green eyes flicker and she catches a terrible sorrow in them and is glad. But then he nods, just once, just barely and she sees that he's proud of her and wants to tear him apart for it.

"I'm sorry I couldn't be what you deserve," he says. "Sorry I couldn't be a better man for you."

She closes the space between them and slaps him hard across the face.

His head barely turns. Shit, he probably saw it coming. Her wrist hurts, her palm stings, she can feel it in her fucking elbow even as she stands before him, quaking with rage and defiance. She can't even say exactly what it was that made her to do it, except that she can't fuckin' bear how sincere he is being. He swivels his head back towards her, those emerald eyes dark as glass, and she slaps him again. This time he lets his head roll with the cuff and her rage blazes brighter. She curls her fingers into her palm as her hand throbs and he notices and she can see the impulse in him to step forward and care for her, like he hasn't just been slapped twice, like he didn't even feel it.

"Get out," she manages to choke out. She knows the tremble of her chin, the flush on her cheeks, the quaver in her voice all betray she is on the verge of tears, but so far she hasn't cried yet and she'll be damned if she breaks now.

Raphael looks at her with unbearable understanding, steps backwards out of the kitchen.

"I'm here til Sunday," he says and his gaze darts to her hand, which continues to throb in an angry fist by her side, back to her face. "Call if you need anythin'." Call if you need shit moved, or some deadbeat bashed up, or an escort around your shitty neighbourhood. Call if you need anything except my arms around you.

He'd come too.

"Fuck off," she spits and continues to glare at him as he steps across her threadbare carpet for the last time to the crummy old frame of her window with its peeling paint and sash that's always getting stuck. Once there, he turns back, seems on the verge of saying something, saying a million things, but as he looks at her, tenderness and remorse making a strange landscape of his blunt features, he releases it all in a resigned exhalation.

"I'm sorry, Angel," is all he says, and ducks out.

She waits twenty seconds, and then twenty more, just to be sure he is well out of ear shot before she lets the first wail rip from her throat, sinking onto her knees in the tiny, crummy kitchen where she sobs and screams and beats her fist against the age-pocked linoleum.


	25. Chapter 25

**2027**

Angel stands in front of the Northampton farmhouse, and waits for memory to overwhelm her.

The sun is high overhead, the surrounding woods dappled in rays of golden light and endless fathoms of green. Spring is on the cusp of full-blown summer and the warm breeze is thick with the scent of honeysuckle and hay, the chant of courting cicadas the only sound for miles. It's beautiful and peaceful, and she's been dreading this, but finds herself oddly unmoved.

Brushing back thick locks of hair over her shoulder, she slams her car door shut and starts up the porch steps. The house has been done over; everything that was rundown and outdated has been repaired, repainted and modernised and perhaps this is why she isn't feeling much. It's hardly recognisable to the haven she and Raphael caught a glimpse of how things could've been between them, in another time and another place, all those years ago.

She lifts a ringed hand to rap on the door frame, then sees the note pinned next to the bell: "come on in" complete with a smiley face, and she recognises the handwriting and smiles to herself. The sleek screen door sighs on oiled hinges, so different to the screeching, flimsy one she remembered, with its chipped paint and sagging flyscreen, and she steps into the cool, dark hall and hears the faint murmur of voices from the back of the house

Her heeled sandals click on polished floorboards as she makes her way to the kitchen, done over in white and oak and she can see the touch of a woman here, she supposes Gabrielle. The voices are louder now and the first nervous whirl of butterflies begin. She can catch snatches of conversation; amidst the voices a familiar, gruff one that turns her knees to water, has her hesitating in the airy kitchen.

"Gettin' another brew… you want anythin'?"

Indecipherable responses, the scrape of a chair, small scuffle of laughter, then the back door is swinging open and he's right in front of her, after all this time and so much said and done, she's face-to-face with him again.

"Angel," Raphael says with quiet surprise, his one intact eye widening, staring at her dumbly, unsurely, and for a moment it's as though it's been a hundred years instead of eighteen, and yet no time at all.

"Happy birthday, Raphael," she says softly, a tiny, tight smile on her lips.

It's strange to look at him and not be in love with him, strange to run her eyes over the rugged terrain of his impressive musculature, the marbled depth of that one good eye and the fine striations of emotion that glimmer through just like she remembers, and not feel desire or passion stir, not feel her heart fluttering or her cheeks flushing. But she remembers feeling that way, and it's like it all happened to a different person.

Raphael chuffs awkwardly, scratches his scarred neck. "Yeah. Forty. Who can believe it, huh?" He's uncomfortable and unsure, other hand in a bunched fist at his side, his shoulders like rock. Once, years ago, after she'd heard he was back in America, she'd gotten a text message: _"its Raphael. u want 2 meet and talk sometime?"_

"_No,"_ was all she'd replied, and he'd left her alone. She remembers hating him as much as she once loved him, but she doesn't hate him anymore and his discomfort is mildly amusing and somewhat upsetting. She leans up against the kitchen counter, catches the quick sweep his eye make of her voluptuous figure, shakes her hair back and attempts a wry smile to convince him she is okay with this.

"So, I snuck up on a bunch of ninjas, huh? Guess age is catchin' up with you all."

He looks a little abashed but the corner of his mouth twitches. "Actually, Leo and Don went 'round front. I was the distraction."

She chuffs, rolls her eyes, even as she realises Leo and Don must've ascertained that it was her, and decided to leave her and Raphael to their awkward reunion alone. "You mean the one divin' in head first, right?"

The grin finally cracks. "Yeah."

They look at each other, and for the first time a splinter of pain breaks out across her heart, but a moment later it's gone. Then it echoes in his gaze and for the first time in many years she thinks about what might've been.

"You look fuckin' great, Angel," he tells her, and she grins, because she knows it's true. She's gone from purple with blue and pink highlights to balayage, her natural black cascading into seafoam greens, wears all tight black and lots of gold jewellery, lips red ombre with gold eyeliner.

"Thanks," she says easily, and sees in the slow decline of his shoulders that her nonchalance is reassuring him. "You look like shit."

He laughs, a husky bark, shifts his weight. She thinks, _if it could've been, it would've_. And dismisses the past.

"That ain't a lie," he admits comfortably, hitching his hands on his belt, but she catches a ripple down his arms as he flexes and knows he's never cared about being pretty, so long as he's got the goods. And, she has to admit, he sure does. In spades. "Mikey says you're workin' at a shelter now? A counsellor?"

She nods. Night school nearly killed her and she had to trick to pay for it, but she finished. Then she realises Raphael has been asking Mikey about her, and wishes it meant more to her. Once, it would've meant the world. "Yeah, I school broken women on how not to be so broke anymore." She feels her lips twist sardonically, cocks her head back to stare at him through her lashes. "Cos I'm such a shining example."

He's looking at her thoughtfully. "You'd be great at that," he quietly says, and his seriousness makes her flush. He hasn't come any closer; they stand at opposite ends of the kitchen with its rustic veneer and modern finishings, and look across the passage of time at each other. Once, they knew every inch of each other's bodies. Now, they will never touch again.

And as though to underscore this fact, the back door swings open again, and she enters.

Raphael is immediately, subtly attentive, his body angling towards the woman, his one eye searching her face in silent enquiry. Amber meets his gaze, her pink lips curving in a smile, looks over at Angel.

"Hey," she says.

Amber is no longer as thin or as ugly or as wretched as Angel remembers, dressed simply in denim shorts and a Sesame Street t-shirt so ancient it is almost see-through. Her long red hair cascades loose, thick and wavy down her back, her freckled face is free of makeup and her eyes are piercing blue as their gazes lock.

"Hi," Angel says. "I'm Angel."

She can see from the twitch of one pale red eyebrow that Amber knows who she is, but she doesn't feel anything about that either.

"This is Alex," Raphael says, and she can tell he wants to touch Amber, put his arm around her, but is holding back. She's not sure if she's offended or touched by his consideration, pointless though it is. It wouldn't bother her to see.

"We've met," Angel says to Amber, not failing to note Raphael's surprised blink. Amber's eyebrow lifts again. Angel can see she's had some work done, but even still she would look great for a woman who had lived the way she had.

"Oh?"

"Yeah," Angel's lip twitches a little. "You told me to fuck off."

Amber isn't fazed; her lips quirk and she lifts a hand and places it easily on Raphael's shoulder, resting her weight against him. It's a natural, uncalculated gesture; she's touching him because she wants to, because her body is drawn to his. "I did that a lot."

"Still do," Raphael says wryly and Amber shoots him a quick glance; they smile conspiratorially at each other and there is no concealing the love they share even in that briefest of exchanges. Raphael's hand is on her back now despite himself. For a moment, they are the only two people in the world.

It's a split second though. Then Amber is cool and languid again, Raphael guarded and gruff. They've been together five years now, she knows. It's been about that long she's been single.

"I'm goin' upstairs for a nap," Amber says, squeezes Raphael's shoulder. "Good to meet you, Angel. Let's have a drink later."

Her ice blue eyes fix on Angel's face and though she doesn't smile, she's sincere. Angel inclines her head agreeably.

"Sure."

Amber leaves, passing Angel in a waft of jasmine and nicotine. Angel looks at Raphael and he looks back.

"I'm gonna find Mikey," she says. "I'm glad you're happy, Raphael." She means it; the softness of her voice is a promise.

A crack breaks across his forehead at her words, his brow growing heavy as she moves towards the back door.

"Are you?" he asks her gruffly, but there's a note there of genuine concern. She looks back at him from the door; he's folded his massive arms across his plastron and his expression is rigid, but his green eye gazes at her with desire. Desire that she will say yes.

"Yeah," she answers him honestly, pushes the door open and leaves.

She greets the others, gives Leo and Don their birthday wishes, kisses April, Gabrielle and Radical, noogies Casey and Shadow and then sets out across the yard, her heels sinking into the soft earth and making her curse, but it's been a year since she last got to see Mikey, the longest time they've gone since Julio, and she doesn't want to wait anymore.

She finds him in the barn, petting the chickens, who squawk and scatter when he leaps up and bounds over to her, throwing his arms around her and swinging her around so that she shrieks as loud as he did. When he sets her on her feet, he grips her shoulders and holds her at arm's length, beaming. His baby face has squared out, his puppy fat now all shredded muscle and he's taller and rougher looking, but for all that he's still her Mikey.

"Happy birthday, Mikey," she smiles at him affectionately, the whole reason she had decided to accept the invitation.

"You look fucking fantastic, Jewel," he enthuses and she laughs as he takes her by one hand and makes her spin for him, the packed dirt of the barn floor scuffling beneath her heels.

"Not bad for pushin' forty?" she poses and preens, knowing he loves it, and he shamelessly encourages her, applauding and wolf-whistling.

"Not bad any way you look at it," he says. "And now I wanna look at it _this_ way." He makes her turn, makes a grand production of admiring her ass, getting away with it in the way only Michelangelo can while she laughs.

"I didn't see your girl up there," she says to him. "She gonna be here?"

Mikey wrinkles his snout. "Who, Kala? We broke up a couple months ago."

"Oh," is all Angel can say, because then their eyes lock and something passes between them. Something that makes her a little unsteady on her feet, makes her heart pound a little harder. Something that makes Michelangelo's baby blue eyes a little wider. She thinks of how long they've been friends and how much he means to her.

He takes her by the hand. "Wanna go for a walk by the creek?" he asks her, his eyes faintly luminous in the thin beams of light that fall through the slatted wooden walls.

His huge, three-fingered hand feels strong around hers, and so gentle her heart skips a beat. She gazes into his face, into the sparkling eyes that are unusually intent, and feels her lips curve in a smile even as a blush better suited to a girl blooms in her cheeks.

"Yeah."


	26. Author's Note

_My beta, gladrial, asked me how it was I didn't have a nervous breakdown whilst writing this fic. The answer is: I very nearly did._

_The inspiration for this story gripped me as I finished Rid of Her as the various facts of Angel's life suddenly came vividly into my consciousness. I felt I had to tell her tale. _

_However, I thought I could do it quickly and easily and with a minimum of energy. How wrong I was! _

_I have been working on this story since I finished Rid of Her in early December, in almost every second of free time I've had. It completely consumed me. Writing it left me an emotional wreck. But I was driven by passion for Angel and her experiences to complete this massive tale in record time._

_I honestly love this story very, very much, though I anticipate it will be one of my least popular fanfics. I am proud of the emotional spectrum I've captured here and to have written a story that is so absolutely about the experiences of women and how we resolve and deal with them. Most of the fanfic I have written over the years has been of this nature, but not in a long while. _

_As with everything I have ever written about Amber, this story is infused with many personal elements._

_This is one of my favourite works I have ever written and I hope that some of you may read it to the end and find some worth in it._

_Many thanks to gladrial for her unending support, encouragement and beta-skills. It was amazing to have her on hand to talk the details of this fic out with as objectivity was impossible, and for the incredible moral support. Thank you, babe! And thank you for being so complimentary to this fic. It's been wonderful to share it with someone who expressed so openly how much it affected them._

_I meant to include somewhere in here that Mikey started hooking up with Renet sometime in that 2007-2008 period. Once the utrom arrival happens, I envision Mikey hooking up with a LOT of people of various species, but I do think he and Angel settle down happily together._

_My concept of Raphael is that he doesn't fall in love easily at all - more like kicking and screaming all the way - but that when he does, he falls in love HARD and that it therefore takes him years to recover from something like a bad breakup or a partner's death. He's SO emotional but also works so hard on not facing his feelings that when they take hold of him he barely knows how to deal with them. I see Raphael as the most emotional of the bunch beneath all the macho swagger and assholishness and that he buffers that with anger, that he doesn't like to feel what he defines as weak. But he IS very emotional and capable of enormous love and when he finds himself in the midst of it, it really knock him for a six. Plus add in that he never got closure with Amber AND he's not sure if she's alive or dead, AND she was his first love, and it was a very intense relationship during a very intense time for him, AND she was the first person he had sex with and hopefully, even if you don't "get" why he loves her, you may understand why he just can't get over it, even though he could have something really great with Angel. It is possible I am going to write a story looking at Raphael and Amber's relationship more closely. Possible._


End file.
